Sam Hirsch is a partner at Jenner and Block, a law firm that often works for Democratic clients. He is also the former deputy associate attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice during the Obama administration.

Hirsch was active in redistricting and election law throughout the country when he first worked for Jenner and Block in the 1990s and 2000s, and since he returned to the firm in 2017. Hirsch worked for the League of Conservation Voters in 2021 to challenge Congressional redistricting in North Carolina, ¹ argued against a proposed reform to the electoral college in California in 2015, ² and challenged Texas’s redistricting in 2006. ³

Hirsch is a member of the National Task Force on Election Crises. ⁴

Career

After graduating from Rice University and Harvard Law School, Sam Hirsch clerked under Judge Francis Murnaghan at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1993 through 1994. From 1997 through 1999, he clerked at the Hague for the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal. ⁵

In the 1990s, ⁶ Hirsch first entered the private sector with Jenner and Block, the law firm he currently works for. He developed the firm’s Election Law and Redistricting Practice, for which he litigated voting rights cases in almost 20 states. ⁷

From 2009 until 2014, Hirsch served as deputy associate attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he oversaw the Environmental and Natural Resources Division, sometimes called the country’s largest environmental law firm; the Civil Rights Division; the Office of Tribal Justice; and the Access to Justice Initiative. ⁸

After the Deepwater Water Horizon oil spill in 2010, Hirsch led the Justice Department’s litigation against BP, including drafting its plea agreement and creating a $500 million Gulf Research Program within the National Academy of Sciences. ⁹

In 2017, Hirsch returned to Jenner and Block as a partner. He is currently in charge of the law firm’s practice areas of Environmental and Workplace Health and Safety Law, Energy, Government Controversies and Public Policy Litigation, Election Law and Redistricting Practices, and Indian law. ¹⁰

Hirsch is on the advisory board of A2J Lab, a non-profit that uses statistics to recommend improvements to the justice system. ¹¹

Redistricting Work

North Carolina 2021 Redistricting Case

In 2021, Sam Hirsch was the head litigator on a lawsuit by the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) against North Carolina to force the state to use a different electoral map after the last redistricting. LCV initially concealed the extent of Hirsch’s involvement in the map’s design, but North Carolina state Sen. Warren Daniel (R), the Republican co-chairman of the North Carolina Senate’s redistricting committee, used the courts to pressure the LCV to admit that Hirsch “directed the creation” of the map itself. After the revelation, LCV argued that Hirsch shouldn’t be legally obligated to answer questions regarding the map. ¹²

In a memo, Daniel stated: “The brazen hypocrisy is remarkable… We drew districts in open committee in full view of the public. Now a political action group hired a litigator to draw maps in secret, wants those maps ordered into law, and insists the mapmaker should be immune from any public scrutiny of proposed districts that produce results another Democratic expert panned as a massive gerrymander.” ¹³

Article “Computational Redistricting and the Voting Rights Act”

In July 2021, Sam Hirsch, Moon Dunchin, Dara Gold, and Amariah Becker published “Computational Redistricting and the Voting Rights Act.” The paper detailed a novel computational method for evaluating the power of ethnic and racial minorities to elect their preferred candidates in specific Congressional districts. The paper claims that their method can be used to form redistricting maps more effectively than current legislative regulations targeting minorities. ¹⁴

Political Donations

Since 2000, Sam Hirsch has given over $46,000 to Democratic candidates and PACs, including Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, U.S. Senators Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Jon Ossoff (D-GA), and the Texas Democratic Party. ¹⁵

1. “GOP senator calls out Democratic lawyer who drew ‘secret’ map in redistricting lawsuit.” The Carolina Journal. December 29, 2021. Accessed May 10, 2022. https://www.carolinajournal.com/gop-senator-calls-out-democratic-lawyer-who-drew-secret-map-in-redistricting-lawsuit/.
2. Hirsch, Sam. “Awarding Presidential Electors by Congressional District: Wrong for California, Wrong for the Nation.” Michigan Law Review First Impressions. Accessed May 10, 2022. https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr_fi/vol106/iss1/12/.
3. “Smith, Hirsch: Supreme Court Decision in Texas Redistricting Cases Vindicates Claim That Map Is Illegal.” Jenner and Block. June 28, 2006. Accessed May 10, 2022. https://jenner.com/library/news/7531.
4. “Task Force Members.” National Task Force on Election Crises. Accessed May 10, 2022. https://www.electiontaskforce.org/members.
5. “Sam Hirsch.” Jenner and Block. Accessed May 10, 2022. https://jenner.com/people/SamHirsch.
6. “Firm Believers.” The Practice. January/February 2022. Accessed May 10, 2022. https://thepractice.law.harvard.edu/article/firm-believers/.
7. “Sam Hirsch.” Jenner and Block. Accessed May 10, 2022. https://jenner.com/people/SamHirsch.
8. “Sam Hirsch.” Jenner and Block. Accessed May 10, 2022. https://jenner.com/people/SamHirsch.
9. “Sam Hirsch.” Jenner and Block. Accessed May 10, 2022. https://jenner.com/people/SamHirsch.
10. “Sam Hirsch.” Jenner and Block. Accessed May 10, 2022. https://jenner.com/people/SamHirsch.
11. “Advisory Board.” A2J Lab. Accessed May 10, 2022. https://a2jlab.org/advisoryboard/.
12. “GOP senator calls out Democratic lawyer who drew ‘secret’ map in redistricting lawsuit.” The Carolina Journal. December 29, 2021. Accessed May 10, 2022. https://www.carolinajournal.com/gop-senator-calls-out-democratic-lawyer-who-drew-secret-map-in-redistricting-lawsuit/
13. “GOP senator calls out Democratic lawyer who drew ‘secret’ map in redistricting lawsuit.” The Carolina Journal. December 29, 2021. Accessed May 10, 2022. https://www.carolinajournal.com/gop-senator-calls-out-democratic-lawyer-who-drew-secret-map-in-redistricting-lawsuit/.
14. Becker, Amariah; Duchin, Moon; Gold, Dara; Hirsch, Sam. “Computational Redistricting and the Voting Rights Act.” MGGG. July 2021. Accessed May 10, 2022. https://mggg.org/publications/VRA-Ensembles.pdf.
15. “Federal Election Commission Search.” Federal Election Commission. Accessed May 10, 2022. https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?contributor_name=sam+hirsch&contributor_city=ROCKVILLE.