Jessie Rossman joined the ACLU of Massachusetts as a staff attorney in June 2013. She has both trial level and appellate advocacy experience, and litigates on a broad range of civil rights and civil liberties issues, including privacy and technology, free speech, reproductive rights, and gender discrimination.
She was recognized as a 2015 National Law Journal Boston Rising Star.
Jessie has a law degree from Harvard Law School and a bachelor's degree from Yale University. Before joining the ACLU of Massachusetts, Rossman served as a law clerk to Judge Raymond C. Fisher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She also worked as a staff attorney at the ACLU of Michigan and as a litigation fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Prior to joining the ACLU of Massachusetts, Jessie settled a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit in Prater v. Detroit Police Department, resulting in a new policy to ensure that pregnant officers were protected against discrimination on the job, and briefed Duncan v. Granholm, a class action lawsuit which challenged the state of Michigan to reform its broken indigent defense system. Since joining the ACLU of Massachusetts, representative matters Jessie has worked on include:
- Briefed Commonwealth v. Augustine, where the Supreme Judicial Court held that the state must get a warrant to obtain cell phone location information, and briefed and argued its companion case, a pending appeal before the Supreme Judicial Court which will determine the meaning of probable cause in this context.
- Successfully settled a public records lawsuit in ACLU of Massachusetts v. Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Counsel, resulting in the declaration that NEMLEC’s documents are subject to the Public Records Law and the disclosure of almost 1,000 pages of after action reports, policy documents and financial reports.
- Successfully briefed class certification for Doe v. Baker, a pending federal class action law suit challenging the imprisonment of women who are civilly committed for addictions to drugs or alcohol.
- Successfully briefed and argued a motion to dismiss in Commonwealth v. Jane, defending our client against charges for interfering with the police which were based solely on her decision to exercise her constitutionally protected right to record the police.
- Briefed, together with cooperating law firms, amicus briefs on a range of issues at the intersection of privacy, technology, civil rights, civil liberties including United States v. Daoud (disclosure of FISA materials), Commonwealth v. Estabrook (application of the probable-cause requirement to CSLI), Commonwealth v. Dorelas (particularity of the warrant requirement for cell phone searches), and Commonwealth v. Walters (contours of the true threat doctrine as applied to social media).
