JASMINE CROCKETT

As an undergraduate student, Jasmine Crockett thought about becoming a Certified Public Accountant or anesthesiologist. She graduated in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts in business administration before deciding instead to pursue law school. She credits this change of direction to experiencing hate crimes while attending Rhodes College—where she and her Black friends received racist hate mail and had their cars keyed—and witnessing people of color face inequalities in the criminal justice system.

A professor at Rhodes noticed her public speaking abilities while she performed in "Little Shop of Horrors" and encouraged her to join the mock trial team, where she began developing her legal voice.
After graduating from the University of Houston Law Center in 2006, she began working as a public defender in Bowie County, Texas, where she worked tirelessly to keep children safe and out of jail. She later started her own civil rights and criminal defense law firm that was notable for taking pro bono cases for Black Lives Matter activists. She represented over 5,000 Texans in court, including over 400 peaceful protesters pro bono, and handled high-profile cases involving the families of Jacqueline Craig and Jordan Edwards.

In December 2016, Jacqueline Craig, a Black woman in Fort Worth, called police to report that a neighbor had grabbed her 7-year-old son by the neck when the boy allegedly littered near the man's home. When the police officer responded, a heated exchange ended with Jacqueline and her 15-year-old daughter being forced to the ground and placed in handcuffs, with a Taser pointed at them. The incident was captured on video and went viral.

Jasmine Crockett served as one of Jacqueline's attorneys alongside civil rights attorney Lee Merritt. Craig's family filed a lawsuit against the City of Fort Worth in 2017 after they claimed Fort Worth police violated their constitutional rights during the arrest, and in 2022, Fort Worth paid Craig $150,000 to settle the suit.

The case sparked significant police reforms in Fort Worth, including the creation of a task force on race and culture and the office of the police monitor.

Jordan Edwards, a 15-year-old African-American honor student and football player, was shot in the back of the head while riding in the front passenger seat of a vehicle driving away from a house party in Texas in April 2017. Officer Roy Oliver fired five rifle rounds into the vehicle, striking Edwards in the head and killing him. Jordan was unarmed. Crockett represented the Edwards family in this case. The officer was fired, charged with murder, and on August 28, 2018, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 15 years in prison—a rare conviction for a police officer in a shooting case. In a subsequent civil trial in 2023, a federal jury awarded the Edwards family $21.6 million in damages.

Both cases involved police brutality against Black families and became catalysts for police reform discussions in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Crockett's work on these cases helped establish her reputation as a civil rights attorney committed to holding law enforcement accountable before she entered politics.

In 2020, Crockett was elected to the Texas House of Representatives for District 100, becoming the sole Black freshman and youngest Black lawmaker in Texas during the 87th Legislative Session. Despite serving during what has been marked as the most conservative session in Texas history, she filed more bills than any other freshman legislator and earned recognition as Freshman of the Year by three organizations: the Dallas Observer, The National Caucus of Black State Legislators, and the Texas Legislative Black Caucus. Texas Monthly also named her one of the most effective freshmen. Her efforts to protect voting rights earned her a spot on the 2021 Root 100 List of Most Influential African Americans.

When Texas Republicans tried to strip away Texans' voting rights in 2021, Jasmine fought back. She was one of the lead architects of the 2021 Texas House Quorum Break, building a coalition and helping to convince her colleagues to travel to Washington, D.C., to advocate and fight for two specific pieces of federal voting rights legislation:

The For the People Act (S.1/H.R.1): This bill addressed voter access, election integrity and security, campaign finance, and ethics. It would expand voter registration through automatic and same-day registration, expand voting access through vote-by-mail and early voting, and limit removing voters from voter rolls. The bill would preempt significant portions of the Texas bills and set new federal standards for elections like same-day and automatic voter registration.

The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (H.R.4): This bill would restore sweeping safeguards for voters of color by reinstating federal oversight of elections in states like Texas with troubling records of discriminating against voters of color. The legislation would strengthen the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which had been weakened by a pair of Supreme Court rulings over the course of the last decade.What made 2021 different from a previous quorum break in 2003 was that in 2021, the Federal Congress could have actually stepped in and done something in a way that in 2003 just wasn't available. In 2003, Democrats broke quorum over redistricting, but there was no federal remedy. In 2021, there was hope that Congress could
pass voting rights protections that would override Texas's restrictive laws.

Unfortunately, the Texas Democrats' efforts did not succeed in getting federal legislation passed. Texas Democrats visited Washington and met with Vice President Harris and others to push for federal voting protections. The following week, Republicans in the U.S. Senate blocked consideration of Democrats' sweeping For the People Act.

The 2021 quorum break collapsed after six weeks when internal divisions fractured Democratic unity, and the effort ended when three Houston Democrats returned, citing the COVID-19 pandemic and providing quorum that allowed the controversial legislation to pass.

So while Jasmine Crockett and her colleagues successfully drew national attention to voting rights issues and advocated forcefully for federal protections, the voting restrictions they opposed ultimately became law in Texas, and the federal bills they championed did not pass the U.S. Senate.

In 2022, Jasmine was elected to represent Texas's 30th Congressional District. Since January 2023, she has served as the U.S. representative for this district, which includes portions of Dallas and Tarrant counties. In the 118th Congress, she was elected as Freshman Leadership Representative, the first African American woman to hold this position. In the 119th Congress, she was appointed Vice Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight.

In December 2025, Crockett announced her candidacy for the U.S. Senate in Texas in the 2026 election, joining what is shaping up to be a competitive Democratic primary. Throughout her career, Congresswoman Crockett has remained committed to civil rights, criminal justice reform, voting rights, and fighting inequality—dedicating her life to public service with the goal of ensuring justice and equality for all.