Frank LoMonte

LoMonte has been the executive director of the Student Press Law Center (SPLC) in Washington, D.C. since 2008.  During his tenure, he launched a number of major programming initiatives, including:

• Organizing the “Tinker Tour,” a nationwide First Amendment awareness tour featuring civil-liberties icon Mary Beth Tinker, which, during the 2013-14 school year, reached more than 200,000 people across 41 states.

• Leading the charge to enact reform legislation protecting students and educators against institutional retaliation for their journalistic work. The “New Voices” movement has resulted in enactment of fortified legal protections in Illinois, Maryland and North Dakota, with bills pending in 11 states, and has left behind student-led grassroots organizations in each state to keep watch over abuses of journalists’ rights.

• Launching the Active Voice project to raise awareness of the impact of school censorship on leadership development opportunities for young women, and creating a paid fellowship program for college undergraduates across the country to design replicable “press freedom service projects” amplifying the voices of young women in their communities.

Before joining the SPLC, LoMonte practiced law with Sutherland Asbill and Brennan LLP in Atlanta and clerked for federal judges on the Northern District of Georgia and the Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Prior to embarking on his legal career, he was an award-winning investigative journalist and political columnist. He was the capitol correspondent for the Florida Times Union(Jacksonville), Washington correspondent for Morris News Service and the Atlanta bureau chief for Morris. He was the Otis Brumby Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the Georgia Law School in spring-summer 2014 and has been a lecturer since 2015 in the University of Georgia Washington Program, teaching a course for undergraduates on “Law of Social Media.”