David Rubin, age 90, died of natural causes in Hanover, NH on October 30, 2023. He was born in the Bronx on December 3, 1932, to Rebecca and Jack Rubin and grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, a fan of egg cremes and the Brooklyn Dodgers. He attended James Madison High School and was a proud graduate of Columbia College and Columbia Law School. After a brief stint in the United States Army in Europe, he returned to assume a judicial clerkship in Washington, D.C.

He served as a staff appellate attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice during the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations. In that capacity, he participated in multiple desegregation and voting rights cases, including the landmark 1962 redistricting case, Baker v. Carr. He also played a significant role in the drafting and passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history. He subsequently served as Deputy General Counsel and acting General Counsel for the United States Commission on Civil Rights, and then as Deputy General Counsel for the National Education Association. In 1979, he argued in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the petitioner in Ghivan v. Western Line Consolidated School District, winning a decision that a public-school teacher could not be fired for expressing concerns about the conduct of her employer. He also authored the book “The Rights of Teachers: The Basic ACLU Guide to a Teacher’s Constitutional Rights.”

Mr. Rubin married Betty Ann Levitas, a teacher, in December 1962 and they remained married until Betty Ann’s death in 2019. They moved from Silver Spring, Maryland to Reston, Virginia with their daughters in 1971. He retired from the practice of law in his early 50s after undergoing surgery for a large benign brain tumor. He lived in the same house in the Lake Anne neighborhood of Reston until moving to New England in 2020 to be near his children.

Mr. Rubin was a gifted violinist, a voracious reader, an opera lover, and a first-rate letter writer. He had a deceptively twisty tennis serve and was an avid walker, seen strolling around Lake Anne on the paths near his home in Reston well into his 80s. He dearly enjoyed food, and frequently described meals he had enjoyed on his travels in exquisite detail many years later. He was a gentle man of few words, and a very proud husband and father.

Mr. Rubin is survived by his daughters, Suzie Rubin (Steve Kahl) of Norwich, VT and Emmy Rubin of Cambridge, MA, his younger brothers Alan Rubin and Jerry Rubin, his grandson Henry Kahl, and his granddaughter Hattie Kahl. A private service will be held, arrangements pending. Donations can be made in Mr. Rubin’s name to the American Civil Liberties Union.

 

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