Deepak Gupta
202.888.1741 | 2001 K Street, NW, Suite 850 North, Washington, DC 20006
Deepak Gupta is the founding principal of Gupta Wessler LLP, where his practice focuses on Supreme Court, appellate, and complex litigation on behalf of plaintiffs and public-interest clients.
Deepak is also a Lecturer at Harvard Law School, where he co-teaches the Harvard Supreme Court Litigation Clinic.
In 2025, the National Law Journal observed that Deepak “has steadily become a mainstay of the Supreme Court lectern and the go-to advocate for consumers and other plaintiffs with cases before the justices.” Over more than two decades, he has led high-stakes cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, all thirteen federal circuits, and many state supreme courts, focused on ensuring access to justice for consumers, workers, and communities injured by corporate or governmental wrongdoing. He has also testified before the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy
Deepak founded Gupta Wessler in 2012 to serve as a counterweight to the corporate dominance of the Supreme Court and appellate bar. Over the past decade, the firm has established itself as the nation’s premier plaintiff-side appellate firm, with an unmatched record of improbable wins in the U.S. Supreme Court and state and federal courts nationwide.
Over the past two terms alone, the firm had seven oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, presented by all four of the firm’s partners. Only four other law firms–all large corporate defense firms–had as many arguments. Gupta Wessler had the highest win rate (71%) of any firm in that elite group. Highlights of Deepak’s advocacy include:
-
In the 2024-2025 term, the firm had four arguments before the Court. Deepak presented three of those arguments and achieved the rare feat of securing two post-argument dismissals for respondents—in Labcorp v. Davis (on class certification and standing) and NVIDIA v. Ohman (on pleading standards for securities fraud).
-
In the 2023-24 term, the firm had three arguments before the Court, winning two–including unanimously defeating sweeping federal preemption of state consumer law in Cantero v. Bank of America.
-
Deepak argued and won a landmark victory for access to justice in Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District, in which the Court ruled that people injured by mass-market products can establish personal jurisdiction to sue corporations where their injury occurred, bucking a decades-long trend of jurisdiction-limiting jurisprudence.
-
In Smith v. Berryhill, Deepak argued at the Court’s invitation in support of a judgment left undefended by the Solicitor General. He is the first Asian-American to be appointed by the U.S. Supreme Court to argue a case.
-
In 2017, Deepak prevailed in Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman, successfully arguing a First Amendment challenge to a law designed to keep consumers in the dark about the cost of credit cards.
-
Deepak argued AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, a watershed case on corporations’ use of forced arbitration to prevent consumers and workers from banding together to seek justice.
Defending the Nation’s Largest Verdicts
Deepak is consistently entrusted by the nation’s top trial lawyers to defend their biggest and most significant victories—including some of the nation’s largest verdicts.
Deepak is currently defending several nine-figure and eight-figure verdicts on appeal, including $275-million and $185-million verdicts against Monsanto (over toxic chemical exposure) in the Washington Supreme Court. In 2024, he secured the affirmance in the Nevada Supreme Court of a $200-million verdict against UnitedHealth (over insurance bad faith) and a partial affirmance in Florida of an $83 million verdict on behalf of musician Flo Rida against energy-drink maker Celsius.
Class Actions and Constitutional Litigation
Deepak also designs and prosecutes class actions and constitutional challenges from the ground up. Highlights include:
-
PACER fees class action: Deepak is lead counsel in a nationwide class action in which he persuaded the Federal Circuit that the federal judiciary has been charging people millions of dollars in unlawful fees for online access to court records. The case recently culminated in a $125 million settlement that reimburses the majority of PACER users 100 cents on the dollar.
-
Federal judges’ class action: Deepak represented all of the nation’s bankruptcy judges, recovering $56 million for Congress’s violation of the Compensation Clause. The American Lawyer observed: “it’s hard to imagine a higher compliment than being hired to represent federal judges.”
-
High stakes constitutional cases: Deepak is currently representing Gwynne Wilcox in her challenge to President Trump’s unprecedented attempt to remove her from the National Labor Relations Board (Wilcox v. Trump) and several plaintiffs seeking to prevent the dismantling of the CFPB (NTEU v. Vought). In the first Trump Administration, he persuaded the D.C. Circuit to issue a rare injunction halting the government takeover of an internet-freedom nonprofit (OTF v. Pack). He also represented environmental groups in a successful challenge to a midnight rule that would have crippled the ability of incoming EPA leadership to rely on science in setting public-health standards (EDF v. EPA) and the Governor of Montana in a case establishing that the Bureau of Land Management’s Acting Director had been serving for 424 days in violation of the Appointments Clause (Bullock v. BLM).
Recognition
Deepak is “known as a skilled appellate lawyer” (New York Times) and “an all-star progressive Supreme Court litigator” (Washington Post). Law360 described him as “one of the emerging giants of the appellate and the Supreme Court bar.” Chambers USA has cited his “impressive” and “highly rated appellate practice,” describing him as “an incredible oral advocate” who “writes terrific briefs” and maintains a “vibrant appellate practice focused on public interest cases and plaintiff-side representations.” Deepak is consistently ranked as one of the “Best Lawyers” for Supreme Court cases by Washingtonian magazine; he is the only non-corporate lawyer on that list.
Deepak’s Supreme Court and appellate advocacy has been recognized with several awards, including the 2025 Consumer Advocate of the Year Award from the Nevada Justice Association, the 2022 Appellate Advocacy Award from the National Civil Justice Institute (for “excellence in appellate advocacy in America”), the Steven J. Sharpe Award for Public Service from the American Association for Justice, and the President’s Award from the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges.
Career Background
Before founding Gupta Wessler in 2012, Deepak was Senior Counsel at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where, as the first appellate litigator hired under Elizabeth Warren’s leadership, he launched the agency’s amicus program and worked with the Solicitor General’s office on Supreme Court cases. Previously, he spent seven years at Public Citizen Litigation Group, where he founded the Consumer Justice Project and served as the Alan Morrison Supreme Court Assistance Project Fellow. He also worked on voting rights at the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice; prisoners’ rights at the ACLU’s National Prison Project; and religious freedom at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He clerked for Judge Lawrence K. Karlton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California and studied law at Georgetown, Sanskrit at Oxford, and philosophy at Fordham.
Institutional Leadership
Deepak serves as outside counsel to the American Association for Justice in the Supreme Court and on issues of law and policy before Congress and agencies. He is a member of the American Law Institute and the Administrative Conference of the United States and sits on the boards of the National Consumer Law Center, the Alliance for Justice, the Open Markets Institute, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the People’s Parity Project, the Civil Justice Research Initiative at UC Berkeley, and the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies. He is a judge of the American Constitution Society’s Annual Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law.
Publications and Media Appearances
Deepak’s publications include Arbitration as Wealth Transfer, 5 Yale L. & Pol’y Rev. 499 (2017) (with Lina Khan), Leveling the Playing Field on Appeal: The Case for a Plaintiff-Side Appellate Bar, 54 Duq. L. Rev. 383 (2016), and The Consumer Protection Bureau and the Constitution, 65 Admin L. Rev. 945 (2013), as well as shorter pieces for The New York Times, SCOTUSblog, and Trial magazine. He is regularly quoted on the Supreme Court in publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post and has appeared in broadcast media including CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, ABC’s World News and Good Morning America, NPR’s All Things Considered and Marketplace.
