John Bonifaz is the Co-Founder and President of Free Speech For People, a national non-profit organization launched in January 2010, on the day of the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC. For more than a decade, Free Speech For People has served as a catalyzing leader in the country fighting for free and fair elections for all, challenging big money in politics, confronting corruption at the highest levels of government, and advancing a new jurisprudence grounded in the promises of political equality and democratic self-government. Mr. Bonifaz previously served as the Executive Director and then General Counsel of the National Voting Rights Institute, an organization he founded in 1994, and as the Legal Director of Voter Action, a national election integrity organization.

Mr. Bonifaz has been at the forefront of key voting rights battles in the country for nearly three decades, including pioneering a series of court challenges, applying political equality principles, that have helped to redefine the campaign finance question as a basic voting rights issue of our time; initiating and leading a legal strategy for revisiting Buckley v. Valeo in the courts; and litigating a series of voting rights cases challenging voter suppression and seeking to protect the disenfranchised.

In addition to his work in the field of voting rights and democracy advocacy, Mr. Bonifaz has also served as co-counsel in international human rights and environmental litigation, including litigation to hold the Chevron-Texaco oil company accountable for its widespread destruction of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Mr. Bonifaz is a 1992 cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and a 1999 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.