Your Child Deserves a Free Appropriate Public Education

Justin L. Gordon is a third-generation plaintiff's trial lawyer whose practice centers on the civil rights of children with disabilities in public education. Outside of his education law practice, he runs a complex civil litigation firm. 

When school districts deny students a free appropriate public education through IEP implementation failures, procedural violations, or predetermination, Mr. Gordon takes the case to due process.

Mr. Gordon earned his Juris Doctorate from the University of West Los Angeles School of Law, where he received multiple Witkin Awards for Academic Excellence. He then completed a Master of Laws in Civil Litigation Strategy and Management at Baylor University School of Law -- the nation's first program of its kind -- graduating with a 3.87 GPA. He also holds a Professional Certificate in Management from Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business.

His undergraduate work in Labor Studies and Public Policy at California State University, where he served as an officer of the Labor Studies Students Association, grounded his career in worker and consumer advocacy before he turned that same commitment toward protecting students with disabilities.

This is not a practice built on strongly worded letters. When the documentary record demonstrates that a school district has denied your child FAPE, the path is due process -- an administrative hearing before the California Office of Administrative Hearings. If the record supports it, we file. The focus is always on what the evidence shows and what relief the law provides.

Most education attorneys stop at the administrative hearing. This practice doesn't. As a trained civil litigator admitted to all four California federal district courts, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court of the United States, Mr. Gordon carries the same case -- and the same evidentiary record he built -- into federal court when the matter demands it. Whether it's a Section 1983 civil rights action, enforcement of a breached settlement agreement, or a prevailing party attorney's fees petition, families get one attorney from start to finish. Nothing gets lost in a handoff.