Wylie Stecklow

Wylie Stecklow has been one of New York City’s leading civil rights lawyers for more than twenty years, with a long history of working with community organizations and individuals for police accountability.  Mr. Stecklow is a past President of the Southern District of New York Chapter of the Federal Bar Association, past National chair of its Civil Rights Law Section, and is an adjunct Professor at Fordham Law School (his alma mater).  He is the 2021 recipient of the Sarah T. Hughes Civil Rights Award, and in 2022 he joined the Second Circuit Civic Education Committee.   He is a founding member of the National Action Network’s Legal Rights Nights and for the past twenty years, he has been litigating police policies and practice concerning the constitutional rights of protesters and photographers. 

He has litigated 1983 cases involving First Amendment Rights in New York, Maryland and Iowa and tried constitutional cases to verdict in various state and federal courts.  His firm was retained by the Occupy Wall Street General Assembly in 2011, where he organized pro bono representation for over 200 Occupy arrestees and has continued to litigate civil rights claims relating to the policing of Occupy.   Currently he is co-counsel to two of the consolidated cases in the litigation in the SDNY arising from the summer of George Floyd protests, In Re New York City Policing During Summer 2020 Demonstrations, along with numerous other counsel including the New York State Attorney General, New York Civil Liberties Union, Legal Aid Society, Davis Wright Tremaine and many excellent civil rights counsel, that collectively are seeking to reform the NYPD to ensure constitutionally compliant protest policing. 

Mr. Stecklow has been a moderator and panelist for CLE’s on constitutional issues, protest, qualified immunity, and law enforcement for numerous bar associations from New York to New Orleans to Salt Lake City, including NYSBA, Brooklyn Bar Association, National Lawyer’s Guild, Bronx Defender’s, Federal Bar Association, Law Line among many others.  Mr. Stecklow is the founder of the well-respected biennial Civil Rights Étouffée (CLE) in New Orleans and chair of the FBA SDNY’s Rule of Law Award that has honored Bryan Stevenson (2016), Hon. John Lewis (2019), and Hon. Justice Sonia Sotomayor (2022).