Stephen Pevar at SAIGE (Society of American Indian Government Employees) conference.
Stephen Pevar is a graduate of Princeton University (1968) and the University of Virginia School of Law (1971). From 1971 through 1974, Mr. Pevar was a staff attorney with South Dakota Legal Services on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation. From 1976 to 2022, he was a National Staff Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Mr. Pevar litigated some 200 federal cases involving constitutional rights, including cases in more than 10 different Federal District Courts, three different U.S. Courts of Appeals, and one case in the U.S. Supreme Court. The areas of his specialty include indigenous rights, free speech, racial justice, and prisoners’ rights.
In addition to his work with the ACLU, Mr. Pevar was an Adjunct Professor at the University of Denver School of Law, where he taught Federal Indian Law from 1983 through 1999. From 2015 to 2019, Mr. Pevar taught that course at New York University. He is the author of The Rights of Indians and Tribes, Oxford University Press, (5th Edition, 2024). He is currently a Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School teaching Advanced Federal Indian Law. Mr. Pevar's indigenous rights litigation includes lawsuits to enforce the Indian Child Welfare Act, to halt discrimination by public school officials against Indian students, and to protect the right of Indians in prison to access eagle feathers for use in their religious ceremonies.
Stephen L. Pevar, center, speaks to the crowd gathered for a press conference on March 21, 2013, at the Adobe Eco Hotel in Rapid City, SD. Pevar, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Racial Justice Program, spoke about the unjust practices executed by the state of South Dakota in handling child custody cases involving Native American families. Pevar represents the Rosebud and Oglala Sioux tribes in the lawsuit filed against the state. To his right are Mr. Pevar's co-counsel, Robert Doody, and Dana Hanna.
American Indian parents in Rapid City, SD, filed suit to stop state officials from violating their rights in state child custody proceedings. Pictured are some of the parents, their supporters, and co-counsel Stephen Pevar and Dana Hanna after a hearing in federal court.