Todd Grabarsky
USC Gould School of Law

Todd Grabarsky is a deputy attorney general with the California Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General. He specializes in federal constitutional law, and in his practice he defends the constitutionality of California laws and policies. Most recently, he has defended California’s public health restrictions and regulations imposed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic against an array of First Amendment and other constitutional challenges. He also defends numerous other California policies such as gun control legislation, labor protections, election laws, policies that expand access to affordable housing, and the accuracy and completeness of the census count.

Grabarsky earned his BA from the University of Pennsylvania and his JD from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York (Yeshiva University), where he served as editor-in-chief of the Cardozo Law Review. After law school, he clerked on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California for the Hon. Edward J. Davila, and then on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for the Hon. Paul J. Watford and the Hon. Arthur L. Alarcón (dec.). He also spent a brief period as an associate at O’Melveny & Myers LLP. He currently serves on the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s State Appellate Judicial Evaluation Committee and as a board member of the Law and Humanities Institute.

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

Bloomberg Government
June 22, 2022
Re: Franita Tolson

Franita Tolson was interviewed about how federal lawsuits from North Carolina, Alabama, and Arkansas test the limits of the Voting Rights Act, the boundaries of state government authority, and the ability of voting rights groups to file racial gerrymandering cases. “These doctrines and approaches in these cases fundamentally reset the rules of the game,” she said. “In 2030 we will live in a completely different world than we lived in in 2020, and 2020 was not favorable to minority voters at all.”

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Robin Craig
March, 2022

"Saltwater Sovereignty: Tribal Marine Management Authority Along the Pacific Coast.” Online Environmental Law Workshop. University of Maryland School of Law, Baltimore, MD.

Daniel Klerman
March, 2022

“Comment on Choi, Erickson, & Pritchard, ‘Coalitions among Plaintiffs’ Attorneys in Securities Class Actions’,” Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, Virtual, Toronto, ON, Canada.

Robin Craig
March, 2022

“Who’s on First? The Mind-Blowing Attempt to Conceptualize Deference in the Midst of Decision Delays and Agency Repeals,” J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Environmental Law Symposium for the George Washington University School of Law, Virtual, Washington, D.C.