Commissioner Joshua Blecher-Cohen
Mr. Joshua Blecher-Cohen is a public-interest attorney and legal scholar. He is a constitutional lawyer at the Constitutional Accountability Center, where he serves as appellate counsel and writes briefs filed at the Supreme Court of the United States and other federal courts.
Mr. Blecher-Cohen was most recently a Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States in the Office of the Counselor to the Chief Justice. He also worked as a judicial law clerk for two federal judges; Judge Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Judge Myron H. Thompson on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.
Previously, Mr. Blecher-Cohen worked as a civil-rights attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, where he challenged unlawful discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability. In that role, he litigated several constitutional cases on behalf of transgender people in state and federal prisons, including landmark victories against the federal Bureau of Prisons and in a class action against the State of Illinois. He was also involved in the successful campaign to fully repeal Illinois’s HIV-criminalization statute.
Mr. Blecher-Cohen’s academic writing on civil- and human-rights issues has appeared in the Yale Law Journal and been presented at peer-reviewed conferences and law schools. His article, “Disability Law and HIV Criminalization,” developed a novel theory for using the Americans with Disabilities Act to challenge state laws that discriminate based on HIV status, which has since been used in litigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Mr. Blecher-Cohen also served as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Library of Congress. He was recognized in 2024 by the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association as one of the Best LGBTQ+ Lawyers Under 40.
A Ward 6 resident, Mr. Blecher-Cohen earned his Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College, his Master of Studies from the University of Oxford, and his Juris Doctor from Yale University.
This webpage was last updated on August 17, 2026.