Diane L. Redleaf

DIANE L. REDLEAF BIOGRAPHY

Called “the conscience of the child welfare system” by the former DCFS director Jess McDonald, Diane L. Redleaf has been a pioneering family defense attorney and a passionate advocate for child protection system policies and practices that protect the rights of all families, especially families in underprivileged communities. Over four decades, Diane has led class action and precedent-setting appellate legal challenges and spearheaded national and multi-state legislative reform efforts on behalf of children and families.

After she graduated from Stanford Law School in 1979 where she was an Articles Editor of the Stanford Law Review, Diane worked at Legal Assistance Foundation (1979-1996) where she initiated and led its Children’s Rights Project. After leaving LAF in the wake of federal restrictions on the work of legal services attorneys, she became a partner in the public interest firm (Lehrer and Redleaf)(1996-2005) where she continued to litigate constitutional class action cases and precedent-setting appellate cases. In 2005 she founded the Chicago-based Family Defense Center, which won the Axelson Center’s first award for excellence in an emerging non-profit. In 2016, she expanded her national child welfare reform efforts by founding United Family Advocates, a national bipartisan child protection policy advocacy network. Redleaf left Family Defense Center in 2017 to pursue her expanding role in policy advocacy on behalf of families.

Currently, in addition to continuing her advocacy through United Family Advocates, she is the legal consultant to Let Grow, which advocates for policies making it “easy safe and legal” to give children reasonable independence. She serves on the Steering Committee of the ABA’s National Alliance for Parent Representation.

Redleaf has taught at the University of Chicago Law School and Loyola Law School. For her leadership and mentoring of other lawyers, she received the CBA’s Alliance for Women’s prestigious Founders Award in 2014. In 2016, she received the Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award from her alma mater, Carleton College.

Her first book, They Took the Kids Last Night: How the Child Protection System Puts Families at Risk

(ABC-Clio, 2018)) recounts stories of families she has represented in her decades-long career as a family defender. Diane’s recent articles exposing violations of child and family rights have appeared in the Atlantic.com, the Washington Post, Cato Unbound, and Reason.com. She has litigated, written, and spoken widely (including multiple CLE programs for the Decalogue Society) on such topics as due process violations in child abuse registers, gender discrimination in the child welfare system, the hidden foster care system, the confusion of poverty with neglect, overbroad child neglect laws and ethics of child abuse pediatric practices.