David Cruz is a constitutional law expert focusing on civil rights and equality issues, including equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. He specializes in discrimination law and the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons. He teaches Constitutional Law I; Constitutional Law II; Federal Courts; Sexual Orientation and the Law; International/Comparative Perspectives on Sex, Gender, and Sexual Orientation; Identity Categories; and Law, Identity, and Culture.

Before joining the USC Gould School of Law faculty in 1996, Cruz was a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General in Washington, D.C. He also clerked for The Honorable Edward R. Becker, Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He is past Chair of the AALS Section on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues and co-president of ILGLaw, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans, and Intersex Law Association.

Cruz graduated from UC Irvine, and earned his master’s degree from Stanford University. He is a graduate of New York University School of Law, where he was managing editor of New York University Law Review.

Cruz’s academic publications include “Spinning Lawrence, or Lawrence v. Texas and the Promotion of Heterosexuality” (Widener Law Review, 2005); “Mystification, Neutrality, and Same-Sex Couples in Marriage,” in Mary Lyndon Shanley’s Just Marriage (Oxford University Press 2004); “Making Up Women: Casinos, Cosmetics, and Title VII” (Nevada Law Journal, 2004); and “Disestablishing Sex and Gender” (California Law Review, 2002).