Cecillia D. Wang (Chinese: 王德棻; pinyin: Wáng Défēn; born 1971)^[1] is an American lawyer currently serving as the national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).^[2][3] Previously she served as the deputy legal director, directing the ACLU's Center for Democracy, working on immigrants' rights, voting rights, national security and human rights.^[4][5]

Wang was born in Oregon in 1971 to a Taiwanese American family and was raised in Fremont, California.^[2] She is a U.S. citizen by birth, though her parents were not naturalized citizens.^[6] Her parents immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan in the 1960s to attend graduate school.^[6]

After high school, Wang graduated with highest honors as valedictorian from the University of California, Berkeley, with a Bachelor of Arts in English and biology in 1992. She then earned her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1995. As a law student at Yale, she was articles editor for The Yale Law Journal and an editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review.^[7]

Wang served as a law clerk to Judge William Albert Norris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1995 to 1996. She then clerked simultaneously for two U.S. Supreme Court justices—Justice Harry Blackmun (after his retirement) and Justice Stephen Breyer—from 1996 to 1997.^[8]

Wang served as a fellow with the ACLU from 1997 to 1998. She then joined the federal public defender's office for the Southern District of New York as a staff attorney. She later entered private practice law firm of Keker & Van Nest, LLP in San Francisco.

Wang was appointed to the federal Criminal Justice Act indigent defense panel for the Northern District of California. She then became the director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project. Wang joined the national ACLU as a deputy legal director directing their Center for Democracy.^[8]

Wang was an adjunct lecturer in law at Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley teaching immigration law courses.^[9]

Wang was mentioned by the legal organization Demand Justice as a potential nominee for a federal judgeship by President Joe Biden.^[10]

• In 2010, Wang was part of the legal team that won a class action lawsuit against a policy and practice of racial profiling and illegal detentions by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. The court ruled that Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio's department has violated the rights of Latino drivers by racially profiling them.^[11][12][13]
• In 2011, Wang was part of the legal team in a civil rights lawsuit challenging Alabama's HB 56 anti-immigrant law.^[14]
• In 2014, Wang was part of the legal team that won a victory in a class action lawsuit challenging an Arizona constitutional amendment that prohibited bail to suspected undocumented immigrants. The court ruled the amendment violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.^[15]
• In 2017, Wang was part of the legal team that represented nine Delta Air Lines passengers that sued the Department of Homeland Security and CBP. The passenger's lawsuit claims they were forced to provide identification before de-boarding a domestic flight from San Francisco to New York.^[16]
• In 2026, Wang argued against the revocation of birthright citizenship in Trump v. Barbara, a pending case at the Supreme Court of the United States.^[17]