Stephanie Krent is a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute, where she focuses on government transparency, surveillance in the federal prison system, and social media censorship.

She is a core member of the team seeking the disclosure of secret Office of Legal Counsel opinions through two lawsuits, Campaign for Accountability v. Department of Justice and Francis v. Department of Justice. The OLC is the component of the Department of Justice that issues legal opinions that bind executive branch officials on matters of significant public concern and. She recently co-authored an op-ed in Columbia Journalism Review on the importance of pushing against the OLC’s pervading secrecy to inform journalists, historians, and the public at large. 

Additionally, she leads the Knight Institute’s litigation in Knight Institute v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, which seeks records concerning the Bureau of Prisons’ digitization, retention, and surveillance of mail sent to people incarcerated in federal jails and prisons. She also litigates PETA  v. Tabak, which challenges health agencies’ practice of blocking social media comments containing keywords associated with viewpoints critical of animal testing.

She has been quoted in Reuters, The Hill, and The Intercept amongst other publications. Krent was previously a legal fellow for the Institute from the fall of 2019 until September 2020. Prior to joining the Institute, Krent clerked for Judge Edgardo Ramos of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and Judge Julio M. Fuentes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She also worked as an associate at Jenner & Block. She is a graduate of Barnard College and Yale Law School. During law school, she received the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for best oral argument in Moot Court and the Potter Stewart Prize for best oral and written advocacy by a team in Moot Court. She also served as a comments editor on the Yale Law Journal.