Marjorie Heins

Marjorie Heins (b.1946) is a First Amendment lawyer, writer and founder of the Free Expression Policy Project.

Education

Heins received a B.A., with distinction, from Cornell University in 1967. She received her J.D. (magna cum laude) from Harvard Law School in 1978. She was admitted to the bar of Massachusetts in 1978 and New York in 1993.

Career

Heins started as a journalist in the 1970s in San Francisco on publications including the underground San Francisco Express Times. She was also an anti-war activist during the Vietnam War.

American Civil Liberties Union

In the 1980s as staff counsel at the Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Heins litigated numerous civil rights matters, including LGBT rights and free speech. One matter involved a litigation against Boston University for the discharge of the Dean of Students on the basis of her complaints about discrimination on the part of the university. This story is told in Cutting the Mustard (1988). Heins also investigated the Boston Police Department's treatment of the notorious Carol Stuart murder case, in which a white man murdered his wife but claimed to be a victim of a carjacking by an African American man.