Andrew Straw, a Democracy Chronicles columnist since 2018, is a person with disabilities who practiced disability law and engages in disability law reform advocacy. Straw was a Virginia lawyer and has served as corporate counsel for billionaire Alan M. Voorhees, who designed the Interstate Highway System and the Metro in Washington DC. Straw then worked for the Chief Justice of Indiana and was the assistant dean in charge of the International Programs at Indiana University-Maurer School of Law. Straw remains a member of the bar in good standing since 1999 at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

He grew up in Indiana, where his brother, a retired USAF captain and twice a critical care trauma nurse veteran of Afghanistan, ran as a Democratic candidate for sheriff of Hamilton County in 2018. Jason Straw was head of Indiana NORML and still seeks reforms of the state’s marijuana laws like most other states have. Jason is known as “Captain Cannabis.”

Andrew Straw was born at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, where his father was training as a U.S. Marine for his Vietnam War duty. Straw was thus poisoned on the first days of his life but was denied compensation and health care. MDL-2218; Straw v. Wilkie, 843 F. App’x 263 (Fed. Cir. 1/15/2021); Straw v. United States, 4 F.4th 1358 (Fed. Cir. 2021). Straw started a group for people born or poisoned there called Children of Camp LeJeune in 2015. Congress voted to compensate people like Straw and his dead mother from the poisoning (S. 3373, Title VIII, Sec. 804). This new law passed the U.S. House by 342-88 and the U.S. Senate by 86-11. "Camp LeJeune Justice Act of 2022" was signed by President Biden on August 10, 2022.

Straw is a 9/11 victim, having been exposed to the toxic dust South of Canal Street in New York City in October 2001, with respiratory and throat illness.

Straw has visited 16 countries and has lived in the United States, Italy, New Zealand, Turkey, and the Philippines. Straw provided services to the Italian Foreign Ministry as a contractor and passed the written U.S. Foreign Service Officer Test in 1998. A National Merit Scholar, Andrew Straw’s CV can be found here. Straw has lived in the Philippines for over 5 years, starting June 2018, studying disability access in that country, but may one day return to the United States when the human rights violations against him stop.

He is an asylum seeker due to the discrimination and human rights violations of state and federal courts in the USA. Andrew Straw lives just 1374 km from where his father was stationed in Vietnam. See also. Straw is engaging in pro se civil rights and constitutional law reform from a distance.

Straw claims the certiorari system limiting access to the U.S. Supreme Court is unconstitutional under Article III of the U.S. Constitution, the First Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment. If his lawsuit is successful, this will open the gates to 7,000+ appeals to the Supreme Court each year that are arbitrarily denied now without a merits decision in each. Such a reform would be the biggest pro-access change in federal court policy since the American Founding. Straw v. United States, 23-16039 (9th Cir.). He is pursuing these massive changes without any help, pro se and in forma pauperis, after being denied certiorari himself 13x from 2014 to 2022.

Notably, Straw's law license property rights have been denied at all levels, from state trial court to U.S. Supreme Court.