Jim Harrington is Director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, which he founded in 1990, and an adjunct professor at the University of Texas Law School. A native of Michigan, Harrington received his law degree in 1973 from the University of Detroit, from where he also earned a Master’s degree in philosophy in 1969. After law school, Harrington worked ten years as Director of the South Texas Project in the Rio Grande Valley, before moving to Austin. Harrington has spent his thirty-three years as a lawyer in civil rights work, handling landmark cases involving grand jury discrimination, police misconduct, privacy, voting rights, free speech and assembly, farm worker organizing, and the rights of persons with disabilities. Additionally, Harrington served two years as director of the Americans with Disabilities Act National Backup Center, helping to organize ADA litigation campaigns in more than twenty states and U.S. territories. He is author of The Texas Bill of Rights: A Commentary and Litigation Manual and numerous law review articles and commentaries.
The Texas Civil Rights Project is a statewide community-based, non-profit civil rights foundation, promoting social, racial, and economic justice and civil liberty, through the legal system and public education, for low income and poor persons. TCRP has offices in Austin, San Juan, and El Paso. The Project does litigation, advocacy, and education around issues involving school discipline, youth and disabilities, jail diversionary programs, modification of probation and parole programs for youth and people with disabilities, and peer sexual harassment in junior and senior high schools.
