CRR Announces Seasoned Litigator and Policy Advocate Bebe Anderson as New Director of U.S. Legal Program
The Center for Reproductive Rights has appointed Bebe Anderson as the organization’s new director of U.S. Legal Program. Anderson has served as senior counsel for the Center since 2010 and is a seasoned advocate with 30 years of experience as a law firm partner, legal aid lawyer, policy advocate, and national public interest attorney.“Bebe is taking the helm of our U, S. legal program in our 20th year as an organization and at a defining moment in the struggle to protect reproductive rights,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “We are thrilled to have her vast experience, strategic sense, and unwavering commitment leading our work here in the United States.”Anderson has nearly 10 years’ experience with the Center, having served as a staff attorney from 1998 to 2006, and then returning as senior counsel in 2010. She has worked on numerous significant cases for the Center, including her work as lead attorney on First Amendment challenges to restrictive ultrasound requirements in federal courts in Texas and North Carolina—resulting in successfully blocking both laws from being enforced and achieving huge victories for women’s reproductive rights in those states. Anderson also successfully argued in Arizona and Indiana that the states’ failure to fund medically-necessary abortions violated those states’ own constitutional protections—strengthening the rights of women in low-income communities to abortion services. Additionally, Anderson served as lead counsel in a challenge to a Florida parental notification law, where her successful efforts led to the Florida Supreme Court upholding a ruling that the law violated the state’s own constitutional right to privacy.“I am so excited to take on this new role at such a critical moment not just for the Center, but for reproductive rights as a whole in the United States,” Anderson said. “I will be working with the U.S. Legal Programs’ exceptional staff to build on our already well-established successes and expertise as we launch new initiatives to restore reproductive freedom as a fundamental right for all women.”Anderson also has extensive legal and policy experience in the field of HIV. Prior to returning to the Center in 2010, she was the director of the HIV Project at Lambda Legal and earlier served as the co-executive director of the HIV Law Project in New York. She is also a member and former chair of the Committee on AIDS of the New York City Bar Association. Early in her career, Anderson was a partner at Erickson, Beasley, Hewitt &, Wilson, a boutique law firm in the San Francisco Bay Area. Before that, she was a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society of New York City, where she represented low income clients in federal and state court and administrative fora, principally in the areas of public benefits, housing, and consumer law. Anderson also served as a corporate litigator at Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam &, Roberts, where she also handled numerous pro bono matters. A Northern California native, Anderson received her B.A. in biological sciences at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and her J.D. from Columbia University School of Law, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and recipient of the Samuel I. Rosenman Prize.
