Clare R. Norins

Clare R. Norins is an assistant clinical professor and the inaugural director of the University of Georgia School of Law’s First Amendment Clinic, which represents clients in federal and state court on a range of First Amendment and media law issues. In 2021, Norins was a co-recipient of the national Clinical Legal Education Association’s Award for Excellence in a Public Interest Case. Her scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law and the George Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal.

Norins joined the law school faculty in 2020 with 15 years of civil rights experience in private practice, government enforcement, and higher education. At Beldock Levine & Hoffman, she specialized in Section 1983 and Title VII civil rights litigation. This included serving as class counsel on behalf of 1,200 political demonstrators, journalists and bystanders arrested during the 2004 Republican National Convention. She also represented multiple individual plaintiffs on First Amendment discrimination and retaliation claims against the City of New York.

Norins additionally served in the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Office of the Attorney General. There, she redressed racial inequities in the provision of public accommodations, increased language access to municipal law enforcement services and obtained relief for skilled trades women who suffered sex-based discrimination while working for New York’s largest utility company. Partnering with the Consumer Protection Bureau, Norins also litigated against the nation’s three biggest mortgage lenders and their agent company, achieving broad injunctive relief for borrowers. Norins received a 2012 Louis J. Lefkowitz Award for outstanding performance in connection with this work.

Immediately prior to joining the law school’s faculty, Norins was assistant director of UGA’s Equal Opportunity Office, where she investigated civil rights complaints asserted by members of the university community, including employment discrimination and Title IX grievances.

Norins graduated Order of the Coif from the School of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She served as a judicial clerk for Judge Michael H. Dolinger in the Southern District of New York.

She is a board member of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation and a member of the bar in the following jurisdictions:

Georgia State Bar
Georgia Supreme Court
Georgia Court of Appeals
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia
U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia
United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit