Stanford’s Anand Argues Whistleblower Case in High Court Debut

Easha Anand, who argued her first Supreme Court case Tuesday, wanted to be a mathematician until a Yale abstract algebra class she took alongside an elementary school-age prodigy convinced her she wasn’t cut out for it.

“This kid was kind of complaining he’d spent 10 hours on this problem set and I remember having this revelation, and being like ‘Oh my god. You could spend 10 years on this problem set and still be ahead of me,” she said.

Anand became a newspaper reporter instead, ultimately working for the Wall Street Journal before taking a job as a capital defense investigator when she couldn’t find a job as a journalist in California.

That led to law school and a clerkship with Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the start of a path that led her to become the new co-head of Stanford’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic.

In her first argument, Anand, 37, tried to convince the justices to toss out a US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decision that said her client Trevor Murray must prove UBS Securities fired him with retaliatory intent for reporting financial wrongdoing.

During the more than 60-minute argument, it appeared a majority of justices were inclined to side with Anand and possibly reinstate the $900,000 jury verdict Murray won.

Justice Neil Gorsuch told her opposing counsel, and fellow first-time arguer Eugene Scalia that he doesn’t see the retaliation requirement in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Congress passed the law to encourage whistleblowers to report misconduct.

Though it was Anand’s first time before the justices, her former colleague Amir Ali said she’s no newcomer to the art of oral arguments.

“She brings just a degree of intellect and attention to details that is the type of stuff that wins cases,” said Ali, president and executive director of the MacArthur Justice Center, where Anand served as Supreme Court and appellate counsel before joining Stanford officially in July.

“Maybe that comes from her journalism and investigative background, but it’s also an understanding of complexity,” he said. “Maybe that comes from her mathematical background.”

Anand grew up partly in India and partly in suburban Washington before attending college at Yale. After working as a reporter and investigator, she attended law school at the University of California Berkeley before clerking for former Judge Paul Watford on the Ninth Circuit and Sotomayor.

She worked as an associate focused on appellate and Supreme Court work at Orrick prior to joining the MacArthur Justice Center where she litigated prison conditions, police excessive force, and other criminal and civil rights cases.

Anand’s caseload at Stanford is much broader but her focus is narrower now that she’s only arguing before one court.

“At Stanford our only limiting principle is we’re on the less resourced side of the v, so that could be a worker against a corporation, it could be a noncitizen against the US government,” she said, adding that the school tries hard to have a mix of cases for its student to work on.

Like other law school law clinics, a goal of Stanford’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic is for the students to take as much ownership of the lawyering as possible, said Jeff Fisher, who serves as co-director of the clinic with Pamela Karlan and Anand.

Though students’ names aren’t allowed on the filings under the court’s current rules, Fisher said, at least seven students worked with Anand on Murray’s case. Sydney Jordan, Daniel Blatt and Ling Ritter helped with the merit briefs. Ariel Lowrey, Katie Larkin, RJ Vogt, and Julia Barrero worked on the petition to the court.

Students at ordinary law clinics typically do the oral argument themselves in the local trial court or before an administrative agency, but that’s not possible at the Supreme Court, which doesn’t have a student practice rule, Fisher said.

“In a way, what happens when you get to the oral argument stage of a case is the roles flip to some degree so now the instructor is in the lead, but the students are supporting that effort,” he said.

A couple of Anand’s students flew with her to Washington and were behind her in the audience on Tuesday.

“They’re really there all the way through,” Fisher said.

The case is Murray v. UBS Securities, LLC, U.S., No. 22-660, oral arguments 10/10/23.