Gregory Luke

Partner

GREGORY G. LUKE joined Strumwasser & Woocher after serving as staff attorney with the ACLU of Southern California and the National Voting Rights Institute in Boston. At the firm, Mr. Luke devotes much of his practice to elections, civil rights, education, and local government litigation. He led the firm's path‑breaking lawsuits to ensure the transparent use of new voting technologies, generating the first judicial interpretation of the critical recount provisions of Elections Code section 15630. Greg also led the firm's multi-year litigation on behalf of the Los Angeles Unified School District to secure the full measure of property tax revenues due to schools under the Community Redevelopment Law, as well as litigation to vindicate the hundred-million-dollar insurance policy obtained by the District to support its historic school construction program. He advises LAUSD and other local educational agencies around the state regarding school funding, legislative drafting, and compliance with the Government, Education, and Health and Safety Codes. Mr. Luke has secured court victories for numerous candidates and political committees in connection with candidate and initiative campaigns, and has successfully defended the rights of individuals and citizens' groups under the anti‑SLAPP law. He has also prevailed in varied litigation to enforce the rules governing public contracting on behalf of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and other non-governmental organizations.

Before moving to Los Angeles, Mr. Luke spent three years as Senior Staff Attorney with the National Voting Rights Institute, where he specialized in voting rights and campaign finance reform litigation. During this time, he litigated in both federal and state courts around the country and co‑authored Challenging Buckley v. Valeo: A Legal Strategy for the Akron Law Review as well as other material published in Supreme Court Debates and the League of Women Voters National Voter Magazine.

Before joining the National Voting Rights Institute, Mr. Luke spent two years as an associate with Cravath, Swaine & Moore, in New York and clerked for the Honorable Thomas K. Moore, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court of the Virgin Islands. He is admitted to practice before the courts of California, New York, and Massachusetts.

Mr. Luke received his J.D. cum laude in 1994 from Harvard Law School and a B.A. cum laude in East Asian Studies from Yale. As a Yale‑China Teaching Fellow stationed at Hunan Medical University in the late 1980s, he became fluent in Mandarin. In 2004, Mr. Luke was recognized as a "Rising Star" by Super Lawyers magazine.