Gregory Pleasants
USC Gould School of Law

Gregory Pleasants is an attorney and social worker at the Vera Institute of Justice’s Center on Immigration and Justice. At Vera, Pleasants is the program director of the National Qualified Representative Program (NQRP), which provides appointed, government-funded defense counsel to people who are detained by the Department of Homeland Security, unrepresented by counsel and found mentally incompetent to represent themselves in immigration proceedings because of a serious mental health condition.

Pleasants joined Vera in 2015 after a two-year position helping the Executive Office for Immigration Review to create the initial NQRP program framework. His work on the NQRP follows service as both a federal public defender in San Diego and a state public defender in North Carolina, and is a return to the focus of his 2007 Equal Justice Works fellowship, in which he served as immigration court defense counsel and worked to strengthen protections for people with mental health conditions in immigration detention.

Pleasants is also a social worker and has practiced part-time as a clinical therapist in an inpatient psychiatric hospital. He also teaches mental health policy and law as an adjunct professor.

Between earning his BA at Washington and Lee University in 2000 and his JD and MSW at the University of Southern California in 2007, Pleasants spent some years as an AmeriCorps volunteer in Los Angeles and working with children living on the street in Mexico and Nicaragua.

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

NPR
January 4, 2022
Re: Franita Tolson

Franita Tolson was interviewed about where election-denying candidates are running to control voting. "The reasons why Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election failed is because there were state officials who refused to substantiate his claims of fraud," she said.

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Robin Craig
October, 2021

Robin Craig participated on a virtual panel discussion on “Key Recent Environmental Law Developments in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and California Supreme Court,” California Lawyers Association Environmental Law Section, 30th Annual Environmental Law Conference at Yosemite. Yosemite National Park, CA.

Robin Craig
October, 2021

“Climate Change Adaptation in the United States.” Integrated Marine Biosphere Research. IMBIZO 6: Marine Biosphere Research: Buoyant Solutions for Ocean Sustainability, United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development activity. Virtual presentation.

Robin Craig
October, 2021

“In term-opener, justices will hear Mississippi’s complaint that Tennessee is stealing its groundwater,” SCOTUSblog, October 1. 2021.