Juan​ Cartagena

Latino Justice PRLDEF
President & General Counsel

JUAN CARTAGENA is one of the nation’s leading voices on equality and nondiscrimination who has successfully used the law to effectuate systems change for the benefit of marginalized communities. A popular public speaker, seasoned litigator and educator, Mr. Cartagena is currently the President & General Counsel of LatinoJustice PRLDEF, a national civil rights public interest law office that represents Latinas and Latinos throughout the country and works to increase their entry into the legal profession. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia University School of Law, Juan currently lectures on constitutional and civil rights law at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. He has written extensively on constitutional and civil rights issues but his current focus for litigation, research and writing addresses the effects of mass imprisonment, policing and drug policy on Latinx communities.

While previously at the Community Service Society he directed its Mass Imprisonment/Reentry Initiative which focused on the effects these policies have on poor and minority communities. In 2017 Juan was invited to write the introduction to the Spanish version of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and his essay, “Latinos and The New Jim Crow: Untangling Convergences” is used to contextualize national convenings of Latinx communities to engage in criminal justice reform. These convenings are sponsored by the Justice Reform Collaborative that Juan co-directs at LatinoJustice.

Along with his staff at LJP Juan now litigates racial profiling and police reform cases, prison gerrymandering, racial profiling against undocumented Latinos, employment discrimination against persons with criminal histories and prison telephone justice. He has served on multiple government task forces in both New York and New Jersey addressing juvenile justice, immigrants’ rights and policing, and most recently, prison conditions in Rikers Island New York. He continues to research, write and lead Latinx communities to confront the intersection between policing / criminal justice /drug policy reform and their well-being, domestically and internationally.