Jessica Thompson was an attorney in PLF’s economic liberty practice group. She came to PLF from the the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), where she presented constitutional challenges to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and COVID-19-related executive actions. She also engaged in appellate advocacy for clients challenging removal protections for SEC administrative law judges and submitted amicus briefs on judicial deference to state supreme courts.
Before joining the NCLA, Jessica was counsel for the Cause of Action Institute, where she defended a popular Internet of Things company against an FTC enforcement action and supported other victims of agency overreach with amicus briefs in appellate courts. Prior to joining the Cause of Action Institute in 2017, she clerked for the Honorable Mark D. Martin, Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. She also practiced insurance defense, including professional and medical malpractice litigation, in North Carolina.
Jessica graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a double major in history and in peace, war, and defense. During college, she interned at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, NC. Before attending law school, she was a Koch Summer Fellow at the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation and, later, a marketing associate at the Institute for Humane Studies. After completing the Koch Associate Program in 2011, she returned to North Carolina for law school, during which she was a summer law clerk at the Institute for Justice and served as a research assistant for Professor William P. Marshall. She received her J.D., with honors, from the University of North Carolina, in 2014.
