Nora Benavidez

Nora Benavidez is a civil and human rights attorney and currently serves as Senior Counsel and Director, Digital Justice & Civil Rights at Free Press. She leads the organization’s efforts to protect against digital threats to democracy. She develops winning policy and regulatory reform solutions that blunt the spread of lies, hate, and other malign online forces while protecting digital civil rights, privacy, and equitable speech. 

Benavidez also serves as Faculty Associate at Arizona State University’s Cronkite Institute where she teaches a course on freedom of expression in the digital age. She previously served as the director of PEN America’s U.S. Free Expression Programs, where she guided the organization’s national advocacy agenda on First Amendment and free expression issues. She has also worked in private practice and at the ACLU of Georgia, litigating significant cases representing victims of voting rights violations, unconstitutional police practices, and other First Amendment infringements.