Sonia Kumar

Sonia Kumar is a senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Maryland. Her work focuses on advancing racial justice and combating abuses in the criminal legal system and prisons. She is deeply committed to legal advocacy that shifts power and builds partnerships between people resisting oppressive systems and supporters with access to resources.

For the last decade, Sonia has had the privilege of working closely with people serving life sentences in their efforts to obtain their freedom and people who want to build a system of justice that brings more healing and closure to all. She was a lead attorney on litigation exposing the role of medical examiner determinations in perpetuating police violence, litigation brought on behalf of children sentenced to lifetime incarceration, and the author of several reports documenting racial disparities in marijuana arrests, police violence, and life sentences. She is a co-founder of the Maryland Parole Partnership and the Lifer Family Support Network and serves on the Board of Directors for the Maryland Chapter of the Federal Bar Association.
 
She is a graduate of the University of Maryland and Yale Law School, and a former law clerk to the honorable U.S. District Court Judge Myron Thompson in Montgomery, Alabama.