Alex Kornya

Alex Kornya joined LAJC as litigation director in 2024. As a career legal services attorney in Iowa and Virginia, he has advocated for racial and economic justice primarily in the areas of collateral consequences, consumer protection, employment, tax, and housing. Since 2009, he has advocated for the rights of people burdened by court debt, working towards systemic change and ultimate abolition of these oppressive systems. In his time in Iowa, Alex oversaw over forty appeals in state and federal courts; major affirmative litigation in housing, consumer, employment, and collateral consequences cases; policy advocacy on public utilities, bail reform, housing, collection of debt owed to the state, harmful effects of automating government, and the rights of manufactured homeowners; and public education and media outreach. 

Alex is the coauthor of several publications, including Confronting Criminal Justice Debt: a Guide for Litigation (2016, NCLC and Harvard CJPP), and Crimsumerism (2019) (Harvard Civil Rights Civil Liberties Law Review). Alex is also the cocreator of Napier, a webscraping application designed to streamline the work of attorneys assessing eligibility for expungement and court debt relief, and abilitytopay.org, a website that borrows IRS methodology to create a useable, evidence-based, and poverty conscious framework for determining ability to pay court debt. Alex was the 2022 recipient of the Iowa Bar Association’s Rollie Grefe Pro Bono Publico Award, and the 2024 recipient of the Iowa Association for Justice’s Gideon Award.