Steve Simpson

Steve Simpson is the director of Pacific Legal Foundation’s Separation of Powers practice group. He is an expert on the nondelegation doctrine, emergency powers, and administrative law, among other issues. Steve has spent over 20 years fighting for freedom.

His career in public interest law started at the Institute for Justice in 2001, where he litigated free speech, campaign finance, and economic liberty cases. After a stint doing policy work at the Ayn Rand Institute and working for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, Steve came to PLF in 2019.

He has litigated cases throughout the nation in state and federal court, including at the U.S. Supreme Court. Among many other cases Steve has litigated, he led the effort against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s unlawful eviction moratorium, resulting in a win in Skyworks v. CDC. And he is currently defending a mortgage company’s free speech from overzealous regulators at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in CFPB v. Townstone.

Steve has spoken and written on a wide variety of legal and policy issues. He has testified in Congress and briefed congressional staffers. He has been interviewed on scores of television and radio programs, including PBS News Hour, Stossel, and Fox News, and his writings have appeared in many publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. He is the editor of Defending Free Speech (ARI Press, 2016).

Steve earned his law degree magna cum laude from New York Law School in 1994. Following law school, he clerked for a federal district judge in the Southern District of Florida and spent several years as a litigator at Shearman & Sterling.

When he’s not at work, Steve can usually be found mucking around in the woods at his cabin in the mountains.

Steve is a member of the bar only in the states of California, DC, New Jersey, and New York.