Manuel Stuart Klausner

Manny Klausner opened his law firm in Los Angeles in 1996, after practicing at the Los Angeles office of Kindel & Anderson for three decades.  He has been engaged in complex and significant litigation involving constitutional law, election law, media law, and business litigation matters.  

Since 2000, Klausner has served as General Counsel to the Individual Rights Foundation, the legal arm of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.  Klausner is Immediate Past Chairman of the Federalist Society's National Practice Group on Free Speech and Election Law, and he is Chairman of the Libertarian Law Council.  He has been active in drafting and campaigning for several major initiatives, and successfully defending against related legal challenges, including California's Proposition 209, prohibiting governmental preferences based on sex and race. He served for six years as a member of the California State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Klausner is a founding editor of Reason Magazine and co-founder of Reason Foundation, where he serves as a trustee and heads Reason's activities in submitting briefs amicus curiae. He is a recipient of the Lawyer-of-the-Year Award from the Constitutional Rights Foundation and the Los Angeles County Bar Association.  

Klausner has represented clients in many high-profile cases, including the West Florida Intervenors in the 2000 Presidential election cases in Florida and the U.S. Supreme Court, Gore v. Harris and Bush v. Gore; Matt Drudge in the defamation action brought by Sidney Blumenthal (U.S. Dist. Ct. D.D.C.); the proponents of Proposition 209 in Coalition for Economic Equity v. Wilson (9th Cir.) (upholding constitutionality of Proposition 209 ban on governmental racial preferences); Ward Connerly and Governor Pete Wilson as amicus curiae in Hi-Voltage Wire Works v. San Jose (Cal. Sup. Ct.); the proponent of Proposition 227 (Ron Unz) in California Teachers Ass'n v. State Bd. of Education and G. Valeria v. Davis (9th Cir.) (upholding constitutionality of Proposition 227, restricting bilingual education classes); and Choice-in-Education League v. LAUSD (Cal. App.) (challenge to school district's partisan political statements in school voucher initiative election campaign).

Klausner has filed briefs amicus curiae in such leading cases as New Jersey Council of Boy Scouts v Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000) (First Amendment associational right case); Gerawan Farming, Inc. v. Veneman, 24 Cal. 4th 468 (2000) (First Amendment compulsory marketing order case); Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger (U.S. 2003) (University of Michigan race-based affirmative action cases); Ashcroft v. Raich (U.S. 2005) and Raich v. Gonzales (9th Cir.) (medical marijuana litigation); Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. v. Federal Election Comm'n (U.S. 2006) (challenge to federal ban on electoral communications); and Lyle v. Warner Bros. Television Productions, Inc. (Cal. 2006) (limiting overly-broad definition of sexual harassment).

Klausner has lectured and debated in law schools and universities across the country. His writing has appeared in the N.Y.U. Law Review, Annual Survey of American Law, George Mason Law Review, Los Angeles Times, and Reason; he has been quoted in the Economist, Newsweek, and New York Times; and he has appeared on ABC's Nightline, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, ABC's First Monday, and other media.