Antonio L. Ingram II (@antonioingram) serves as Senior Counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, where he works on cases and matters that advance racial justice in educational equity and political participation.
Mr. Ingram serves as lead counsel in Simon et al v. Ivey et al., challenging Alabama’s SB 129, prohibiting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in public colleges and universities. Mr. Ingram also served as part of the litigation team in South Carolina NAACP v. Alexander, a federal lawsuit challenging South Carolina’s racially discriminatory Congressional and state House legislative map. Mr. Ingram also Co-authored a U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief in 303 Creative v. Elenis where he opposed intersectional anti-Black and anti-LGBTQIA+ public accommodations discrimination.
In addition to his litigation work, Mr. Ingram successfully engaged in policy advocacy and spearheaded a campaign to oppose legislation banning critical race theory, tenure and diversity, equity and inclusion through implementing media strategies, organizing faculty and students and submitting both written and oral testimony before the Texas House and Texas State Senate. At the federal level, Mr. Ingram has briefed the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce about the discrimination that Black university students face on college campuses in Texas and Alabama. Mr. Ingram also represented parents and students in an administrative complaint before the Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights, involving Title VI and Title IX hostile environment claims in Southlake, Texas.
Prior to joining LDF, Mr. Ingram litigated as a senior associate at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, where he maintained an active pro bono practice and represented incarcerated individuals in Post-Conviction Relief Proceedings seeking to overturn non-unanimous jury verdicts. Mr. Ingram began his career at Morrison and Foerster LLP, where he was a junior litigation associate and represented unhoused plaintiffs challenging a city’s anti-homeless ordinances, a family who experienced an unreasonable search by a police department and a refugee in removal proceedings because of ineffective assistance of counsel claims.
Mr. Ingram has discussed his work and has been published in popular news outlets and platforms, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time Magazine, the Associated Press, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Blavity. Mr. Ingram regularly speaks at conferences, law schools, and symposiums about civil rights, LGBTQIA+ rights and the importance of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in education.
Mr. Ingram received his J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law and B.A. from Yale College and served as a law clerk to the Honorable Ivan L.R. Lemelle on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana and Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Between his federal clerkships, Mr. Ingram served as a Fulbright Public Policy Fellow to Malawi where he served as a special assistant in Malawi’s Anti-Corruption Bureau. Mr. Ingram is a member of the California, District of Columbia, and the U.S. Supreme Court bar.
