Before joining the Cato Institute, Anastasia was a civil rights attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, where she led the organization’s equality and opportunity program. She also co‐created the podcast, Dissed, which tells the stories behind infamous Supreme Court dissents.
In her decade before joining Cato, Anastasia represented entrepreneurs in challenges to onerous occupational licensing laws, anti‐competitive titling restrictions, and Certificate of Need (CON) programs. She developed nearly a dozen cases challenging CON laws across the country, leading to legislative reform in Montana, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Among her other wins are a case invalidating busking restrictions in Houston, several appellate decisions opening up the courthouse doors to civil rights plaintiffs, and legislative repeal of Virginia’s happy hour advertising restrictions.
Her writings on law and liberty have been featured in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and more, and she has appeared on Headline News, Reason TV, Newsmax, and John Stossel.
Anastasia earned her B.A. with Dean’s Honors from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was research assistant to Professor Randy E. Barnett—the intellectual “Godfather” of the constitutional challenge to Obamacare.
