Jonathan Taylor

Practice Areas

Jonathan E. Taylor is a principal at Gupta Wessler, where he represents plaintiffs and public-interest clients in Supreme Court, appellate, and constitutional litigation.

Career

Since joining the firm a few months after it was founded in 2012, Jon has presented oral argument in multiple cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and in nearly all federal circuits and numerous state appellate courts. He has also been the principal author of dozens of briefs filed in the U.S. Supreme Court and all levels of the state and federal judiciaries.

Jon has argued multiple cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including a 9-0 victory for consumers in a class action against Bank of America. In 2021, Jon served as counsel of record in the U.S. Supreme Court in Lombardo v. City of St. Louis, in which he successfully obtained an unheard-of opinion summarily vacating a pro-officer decision on the merits of a police-excessive-force case. Jon was awarded the 2021 National Law Journal Rising Star award for his stellar appellate advocacy. Jon has also testified before Congress and, in 2014, he received the President’s Award from the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges for his work helping to obtain a $56 million judgment for a nationwide class of federal bankruptcy judges.

Beyond his work in the U.S. Supreme Court, Jon has argued a number of high-stakes cases in recent years. These include an Eighth Circuit appeal upholding a punitive-damages jury award against a constitutional attack; an Eighth Circuit appeal successfully reinstating a jury’s finding of negligence by GM and ordering a new trial on damages only; a Ninth Circuit appeal defending a $102 million class-action judgment against Walmart for violations of California labor law; a D.C. Circuit appeal for a class of tax-return preparers challenging the legality of over $250 million in IRS-imposed fees; a Missouri Court of Appeals case concerning the applicability of product-liability law to mobile apps; Third and Seventh Circuit appeals resulting in landmark decisions expanding the availability of paid-military leave; a summary-judgment hearing for a class of PACER users challenging the judiciary’s fee structure for accessing court filings; a Fifth Circuit appeal raising an important personal-jurisdiction question; a Fourth Circuit appeal about Article III standing; First Circuit appeal successfully defending Boston and Brookline’s public-carry restrictions against a Second Amendment challenge; and an Eighth Circuit appeal successfully defeating a claim of immunity in a constitutional challenge to a city’s “pay-to-play” system, in which people arrested for minor infractions are jailed if they can’t afford to pay fees. Jon also served as lead counsel in a recent Eighth Circuit appeal in which he successfully defended a $20 million judgment on behalf of sexual-assault survivors.

As these cases illustrate, Jon’s work has spanned a wide range of topics—including state tort law, punitive damages, preemption, personal jurisdiction, class certification, the First Amendment, due process, Article III standing, civil rights, administrative law, and a broad array of issues involving consumers’ and workers’ rights. He has represented tort victims, classes of consumers and workers, federal judges, members of Congress, national nonprofits, military reservists, former NFL players, retail merchants, and the families of people killed by police violence.