Zoe Savitsky

OF COUNSEL

Admitted to practice in California; practicing under the supervision of a member of the New York Bar

Zoe Savitsky (she/her) has been Of Counsel at Wardenski P.C. since 2023. Zoe is an experienced civil rights and public interest lawyer with many years of experience investigating, litigating, and resolving challenging and pathbreaking cases across the United States.

Prior to joining Wardenski P.C., Zoe spent over a dozen years in high-impact government and nonprofit litigation and leadership roles, managing teams and leading cases focused on racial, economic, housing, education, health, and climate justice. After graduating from law school, she joined the United States Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division through the Attorney General’s Honors Program, serving first as a Trial Attorney in the Educational Opportunities Section, and then as Policy and Strategy Counsel in the Policy and Strategy Section. She then served as a Deputy Legal Director and leader of the Children’s Rights Practice Group of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and then as a Supervising Deputy City Attorney for the Affirmative Litigation, Innovation, and Enforcement Division of the Oakland City Attorney’s Office in Oakland, California.

Across those roles, Zoe’s work focused on critical issues facing historically and presently marginalized individuals and groups. Among other things, her work collaboratively led to:

• the Department of Justice’s first contemporary settlements addressing school-to-prison pipeline issues in Palm Beach County, Florida, and Meridian, Mississippi;

• SPLC’s creative lawsuits addressing school safety and education privatization; and

• Oakland’s efforts to hold everyone from the Trump Administration to opioid manufacturers, real estate empires, and fossil fuel companies accountable.

In addition to her litigation work, Zoe also has a long record of conceiving of, building, and launching innovative legal projects with many different types of stakeholders, from collaborating to develop Public Funds Public Schools, a nationwide effort to protect public education, to helping launch Oakland’s pioneering Housing Justice Initiative, a citywide project to secure justice for Oakland tenants. Throughout, Zoe has been honored to co-counsel with many terrific public, private, and nonprofit organizations, including Democracy Forward, the Public Rights Project, and the Giffords Law Center, among others.

Zoe also worked in public policy, and has spoken and published individually and collaboratively on a wide range of policy topics, from education in juvenile facilities to paid family leave. She has also spoken and written about her experiences as a disabled cancer survivor.