Joseph Pace is a seasoned appellate attorney who has briefed and argued cases in federal and state courts around the country. He has represented both individual and corporate clients in a wide variety of trial and appellate matters involving class actions, commercial disputes, trademark infringement, arbitration, employment discrimination, housing discrimination, police brutality, Federal Credit Reporting Act claims, defamation, and FOIA. He also has extensive experience litigating First Amendment issues.

Before founding J. Pace Law, Mr. Pace was senior legal counsel for Reprieve US, where he directed litigation efforts challenging the use of indefinite detention and drone strikes in the War on Terror and devised a First Amendment challenge to state secrecy laws enacted to conceal the source of lethal injection drugs. Prior to that, Mr. Pace was the John J. Gibbons Fellow in Public Interest & Constitutional Law at Gibbons P.C., where he specialized in civil rights impact litigation. Before his fellowship, Mr. Pace was a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

Ms. Pace graduated from Yale Law School where he was an Editor on the Yale Law Journal, recipient of the Israel H. Peres Prize for best student publication in the Yale Law Journal, and awarded the Potter Stewart Prize for best written brief and oral argument in the Moot Court competition.

Representative matters that Mr. Pace has handled in appellate courts include:

• Represented a group of U.S. Senators as amici in an appeal challenging the federal government’s failure to release the Drone Memos (2nd Circuit)

• Appealed a summary judgment order dismissing students’ Fair Credit Reporting Act claims against Experian and federal loan providers (8th Circuit)

• Appealed orders denying motions to vacate arbitration awards (1st & 2nd Circuits)

• Appealed an order denaturalizing a U.S. citizen for failing to disclose a prior drug offense (11th Circuit)

• Represented the ACLU of NJ as amicus in a Fourth Amendment challenge to the expansion of the private search doctrine (New Jersey Supreme Court)

Representative matters that Mr. Pace has handled in trial courts include:

• Secured a $1.8 million settlement against the City of New York for violating the First Amendment rights of a payphone company.

• Successfully defended against a summary judgment motion seeking dismissal of a whistleblower complaint filed by a federal employee

• Secured class certification in a case alleging wage-and-hour violations

• Compelled the Federal Bureau of Prisons and NYPD to comply with Freedom of Information requests

• Successfully defended against several rounds of summary judgment motions filed by New York City to dismiss First Amendment retaliation and unconstitutional conditions claims

Publications

The Roberts Court Has Turned the First Amendment Into a Wrecking Ball, Slate (July 2, 2023)

Can Private Employees Be Fired for Out-of-Office Political Speech?, NYSBA Journal (May 2023)

Bankruptcy as Constitutional Property: Using Statutory Entitlement Theory to Abrogate State Sovereign Immunity, 119 Yale L. J. 1568 (2010)

Suspending the Writ at Guantanamo: Take III?, 119 Yale L. J. 885 (2010)

jpace@jpacelaw.com

Clerkship

Southern District of New York, Honorable Laura Taylor Swain (2011-2013)

Award and Memberships

• 2023 Super Lawyers “Rising Star”

• New York State Trial Lawyers Association

• American Association of Justice