Staff

Iván Espinoza-Madrigal is a Staff Attorney for Lambda Legal, the oldest and largest national legal organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and people with HIV.

Espinoza-Madrigal joined Lambda Legal in March 2011. Espinoza-Madrigal is developing an initiative on behalf of LGBT people of color, LGBT immigrants, and low-income LGBT communities. In this capacity, he will be expanding Lambda Legal's work addressing the legal needs of LGBT and HIV-affected people who identify across intersecting lines of race, ethnicity and socio-economic class through litigation, public education, and policy advocacy.

Before joining Lambda Legal, Espinoza-Madrigal was a Staff Attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) in San Antonio, Texas. At MALDEF, he litigated complex civil rights cases involving issues of first impression in federal courts, focusing primarily on the constitutional rights of immigrants. He served as counsel in Friendly House v. Whiting, a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Arizona's immigration law, SB 1070, and handled MALDEF's immigrants' rights docket in Texas and eight other states in the Southwest.

Espinoza-Madrigal was a member of the legal team that successfully defended the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case. He also worked on numerous voting rights cases, including major challenges to Arizona's and Georgia's voter registration laws.

Before joining MALDEF, Espinoza-Madrigal worked with Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. At the firm, he successfully defended the municipal identification card of New Haven, Connecticut, against an attempt to dismantle the program. His work in New Haven had a direct impact on the implementation of similar programs in cities across the country.

Prior to joining the firm, he served as a law clerk for Judge Eric Clay in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and for Judge Ronald Ellis in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

He received his JD from New York University School of Law, where he was a Root-Tilden-Kern Sinsheimer Public Interest Scholar. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a BA in Political Science and Latin American Studies. He serves on the Board of Directors of the HIV Law Project.