Federal Agents Aren’t Above the Law

Ameerah Adetoro is the Paralegal and Intake Coordinator for the ACLU of the District of Columbia (ACLU-DC). As such, she manages legal intake and investigations procedures for all prospective clients and cases that the ACLU-DC receives, in addition to providing administrative litigation support to our staff attorneys.

Ameerah joins the ACLU-DC with experience in legal investigation, directly after interning with the Criminal Defense and Prisoner Advocacy Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center. Here, she conducted pre-trial and post-conviction criminal investigations with defense attorneys on behalf of indigent individuals in the D.C. area.

Prior to this, Ameerah spent time studying in Scotland on the Common Law degree track at the University of Glasgow School of Law. She also served as a 2023 Public Affairs and Policy Lab research scholar at American University, coding and analyzing qualitative data in contribution to Dr. TaLisa J. Carter’s project on racial linguistics and color-blind racial ideology in the United States. Ameerah then graduated with Latin Honors from American University, earning a B.A. in Justice and Law, a concentration in Criminal Justice, and a minor in Sociology.

In her spare time, Ameerah enjoys playing volleyball and speaking to anyone who will listen about destigmatizing harmful stereotypes surrounding the pit bull terrier dog breed – in shameless defense of her beloved pup, Bubba.

Scott Michelman is the Legal Director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia. Scott has litigated a broad range of civil rights and civil liberties issues, including access to the courts, disability rights, discrimination and selective enforcement, federal officer accountability, freedom of speech and press, habeas corpus, immigrants’ rights, judicial secrecy, LGBTQ+ rights, police misconduct, political protest, post-September 11 abuse of executive power, prisoners' rights, privacy rights, religious freedom, reproductive freedom, the rights of medical marijuana patients, sentencing law, and unreasonable search and seizure. He has also litigated cases about class action law, consumers’ rights, and workers’ rights.

Scott has argued before the United States Supreme Court, the highest courts of the District of Columbia and Massachusetts, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Ninth, Tenth and D.C. Circuits, and numerous other federal and state courts around the country.

Additionally, Scott is Shikes Fellow in Civil Liberties and Civil Rights and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, where he has been invited to teach Civil Rights Litigation for more than a dozen years. He has previously taught as clinical or adjunct faculty at American University Washington College of Law, Santa Clara Law School, Seton Hall Law School, and the University of California at Santa Cruz. Scott is the author of the law school textbook Civil Rights Enforcement (Aspen, 3d. ed. forthcoming 2026).

In connection with his practice, Scott has been quoted by national radio, television, and print media outlets, including NPR, CNN, MSNBC/MSNow, Fox News, Democracy Now, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Reuters, USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, The Guardian, ProPublica, The New Yorker, Newsweek, Politico, Buzzfeed, and The National Law Journal, and his commentary and opinion have appeared in SCOTUSblog, Slate, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. His legal scholarship includes The Branch Best Qualified To Abolish Immunity, 93 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1999 (2018); Doing Kimbrough Justice: Implementing Policy Disagreements With the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 45 Suffolk L. Rev. 1083 (2012) (with Jay Rorty); and Who Can Sue Over Government Surveillance? 57 UCLA L. Rev. 71 (2009), reprinted in 26 Saltzman & Wolvovitz, Civil Rights Litigation & Attorney Fees Annual Handbook 79 (2010).

Before joining the ACLU-DC in 2016, Scott was an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group and before that the ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and he went on to clerk for the Honorable Betty B. Fletcher of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
A member of the British royal family once broke his thumb playing football under Scott’s supervision.

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