Sarah Hinger

Sarah Hinger

Staff Attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program

Bio

Sarah Hinger is a Staff Attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program, where her work focuses on education and youth justice. Her recent work includes representing plaintiffs in Kenny v. Wilson, challenging a vague South Carolina law making it a crime to disturb a school. This law is applied far more frequently to Black students, and was invoked in the arrest of a student and plaintiff in the case, when she spoke out in protest while witnessing a classmate violently ripped from her desk by a school police officer. Prior to joining the ACLU, Sarah was a Trial Attorney with the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, Educational Opportunities Section, where she received the Assistant Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award. At the Civil Rights Division, she litigated issues of desegregation, discriminatory school discipline, classroom equity, discrimination against English language learners and immigrant and refugee students, and Title IX. Sarah previously served as a Karpatkin Fellow with the ACLU Racial Justice Program and a fellow and staff attorney with the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. She completed her J.D. at Columbia Law School, her M.Phil. at the University of Cambridge, and her B.A. at the University of Virginia.

Featured Work

News & Commentary
Six youth and an adult sitting in a classroom with their desks forming a semi-circle. Three of the youth have their hands raised.
  • Education Equity

This County Criminalized Students for Bad Grades – Until Now

Since 2001, the Riverside County probation department has been needlessly funneling young people struggling with grades, behavior, trauma, and mental health into the criminal justice system. This direct line to the criminal system is the product of a partnership between local school districts and
News & Commentary
What do you know about Riverside's Youth Accountability Team (YAT)?
  • Education Equity

Innocent Students Are Getting Criminalizing Probation in One California County

Children who have not committed a crime should never be treated like criminals. But that’s exactly what’s happening today in the schools in Riverside County, California.