Joshua Tom

Joshua Tom, Legal Director

Bio

Joshua Tom joined the ACLU of Mississippi as Staff Attorney before being promoted to Legal Director. Prior to joining the ACLU of Mississippi, Joshua was in private practice doing corporate litigation. 

Joshua returned to the South after living in the North East for over a decade, most recently in Brooklyn, NY. He is a native of Memphis, TN, and his parents are natives of the Mississippi Delta.

Joshua studied literature and economics at Vanderbilt University and law at Boston University, where he was a member of the Law Review.  Afterward, he practiced complex corporate litigation at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in New York.  Passionate about fairness, justice, and equality, Joshua moved from corporate to civil rights law and to the ACLU of Mississippi. 

Featured Work

News & Commentary
Mississippi Voters Deserve Transparency square

Mississippi Voters Deserve Transparency

The Mississippi Legislature is currently engaged in redistricting, once-a-decade work to redraw state legislative and congressional maps. Redistricting can be done fairly, so that all voters can have their voices heard equally and given a chance to elect representatives of their choice. It can also be done to dilute the voice of certain groups while amplifying the political power of others. For example, in 2018 in Ohio, Republicans won 53% of the statewide vote but managed to win 12 out of 16 congressional seats. This unfair result was achieved through gerrymandering, the practice of engaging in redistricting in an unfair, partisan manner, which allows elected officials to choose their voters. Democrats in Maryland, and politicians in other states across the country, have engaged in similar unfair gerrymandering.
News & Commentary
HB 586

If HB586 Becomes Law, Litigation Will Follow

HB 586 proposes a database matching scheme to compare statewide voter rolls with county, state and federal database records in an effort to identify and purge non-citizens from the voter rolls.