Eric Schneiderman is a lifelong progressive Democrat who has spent his whole life fighting for justice; Equal justice regardless of race, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation or identity; Independent justice without regard to political or special interests; And progressive justice that takes an activist approach to protecting everyday New Yorkers.
After graduating from Amherst College, Eric served for two years as a Deputy Sheriff where he started the first comprehensive drug and alcohol treatment program at the local jail. He attended Harvard Law School, and then clerked for two years in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Eric later entered private practice and became a partner at the firm of Kirkpatrick and Lockhart.
While in private practice, Eric served as counsel to a long list of advocacy and public interest organizations. For over 10 years he was counsel to the West Side Crime Prevention Program, using innovative legal tools to evict drug dealers and clean up crack dens. As a founder of the Attorney General's Anti-Crime Advocates program and a member of the board of the Lawyer's Committee on Violence, Eric recruited and trained private attorneys to represent community groups striving to protect their neighborhoods from crime.
He served as a legal advisor to the Clean Money, Clean Elections
campaign for public financing of elections in 1998, and acted as lead
attorney for the NYPIRG Straphangers campaign in a series of historic
lawsuits against the MTA.
Eric was elected to the New York
State Senate in 1998 as a reformer. His efforts were critical in
passing the Clinic Access Bill, Hate Crimes legislation, the Women's
Health and Wellness Act, legislation to increase the minimum wage, and a
host of anti-illegal gun, environmental and civil rights laws. He has
been recognized for his work on legislation protecting freedom of
choice, fair funding for public schools, ethics reform, and the
expansion of affordable health care for all New Yorkers. Eric has also
been a leading advocate for rational and effective gun laws, and serves
as national co-chair of Legislators Against Illegal Guns.
When the Democrats took control of the Senate in January 2009, Eric became Chair of the Senate Codes Committee, which considers legislation related to the state's criminal and civil justice systems. And just months after taking back the Senate, Eric shepherded through sweeping reforms to the notoriously unfair Rockefeller Drug laws. These reforms included an unprecedented expansion of drug treatment as an alternative to prison, gave judges more discretion to divert non-violent drug-addicts to treatment, and increased penalties for drug kingpins.
