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Jenin Younes

Litigation Counsel


Jenin Younes is Litigation Counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Having always been a passionate advocate for individual liberties, Jenin spent the first part of her career as an appellate public defender, providing representation to indigent clients convicted of criminal offenses in New York City.  In this capacity, she briefed and argued countless appeals in New York’s Appellate Division, Second Department, and several cases in the New York State Court of Appeals.

After witnessing governments throughout the nation violate human rights and civil liberties in an ostensible effort to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, Jenin became active in fighting against lockdowns and related policies. At NCLA, she has litigated against Covid-19 vaccine mandates, and played a significant role in First Amendment challenges to the government’s involvement in censorship on social media, including in Missouri v. Biden, a case initially brought by the Attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana in which NCLA represents two of the co-signers of the Great Barrington Declaration, Drs. Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff.  She led NCLA’s successful effort to preliminary enjoin California’s law punishing doctors for disseminating so-called misinformation about Covid-19 to patients. Jenin also served as senior special counsel on the House Judiciary Committee’s Weaponization of Government Subcommittee’s investigation into the government’s role in censoring speech on social media.

Her writing on these subjects has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Tablet Magazine, and Bloomberg Law, among other outlets.

Jenin holds a B.A. from Cornell University and a J.D. from New York University School of Law.

Not licensed in Virginia; admitted to practice in New York, D.C., and select federal jurisdictions.

 

Vaccine Passports

By: Jenin Younes April 10, 2025
COVID-19 | FIve Years Page
Once Covid-19 vaccines became widely available in March of 2021, New York’s now-disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo launched a vaccine passport program. Governor Cuomo, unlawfully circumventing the state’s administrative procedure act, forced businesses to require patrons to show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test, or else be barred from entering. Many other cities…
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Focused Protection

By: Jenin Younes March 26, 2025
COVID-19 | FIve Years Page
In stark contrast to widely accepted understandings of what constitutes science, “the Science” that emerged during the Covid era eschewed unbiased observation, systematic experimentation and debate, replacing those careful, deliberative processes with rushes to judgment and stifling of opposing viewpoints.[1]  By the time Covid-19 reached epidemic proportions in the United States, public health authorities had concluded…
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Meta’s U-Turn on Censorship: A Win for Free Speech or Too Little, Too Late?

By: Jenin Younes January 10, 2025
Blogs
Meta announced that it will discontinue its fact-checking program, which it will replace with a Community Notes model akin to that utilized by X (formerly known as Twitter).  Free speech proponents are celebrating this policy change as effectively ending viewpoint-based censorship on Meta’s social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Threads).  To accompany Meta’s written statement,…
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New Series: “15 Days to Slow the Spread” — How Bureaucracy Made Covid-19 WorseClick Here to Read
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