Yazmin Cader Frazier: Civil Rights Lawyer, ACLU Leader, and Family Life
Yazmin Cader Frazier, professionally known as Yasmin Cader, is an American civil rights lawyer and senior ACLU executive. She is also the wife of Entertainment Tonight host Kevin Frazier. Her career spans federal civil rights work, more than two decades in public defense, legal teaching, private practice, and national leadership at the American Civil Liberties Union.
In this article, you’ll learn about Yazmin Cader Frazier’s education, legal career, work at the Justice Department, years as a public defender, ACLU leadership, marriage to Kevin Frazier, and family life. Her story stands out because her professional record reaches far beyond her connection to television.
A Career Built Around Civil Rights
Long before many people searched for Yazmin Cader Frazier because of her husband, she had already built a demanding legal career.
Cader studied at Howard University and later earned her law degree from Yale Law School. Yale identifies her as a member of the Class of 1992. Those years helped shape the kind of work she would pursue, with a strong focus on justice, public service, and legal advocacy.
After law school, she served as a judicial law clerk for Judge Damon J. Keith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She then entered the U.S. Department of Justice through its Honors Program and worked in the Civil Rights Division.
At the Justice Department, she handled employment discrimination matters. Her work included claims involving racial and sexual harassment and other forms of workplace discrimination. That early federal experience gave her direct exposure to civil rights litigation before she moved into public defense.
More Than Two Decades as a Public Defender
Public defense became one of the longest chapters of her career.
Yale Law School says Cader began that work in 1995 and spent 23 years representing adults and young people in state and federal courts. Her clients faced charges ranging from misdemeanors to serious felony and capital cases.
Her public-defense work took her across several major legal systems. She worked with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, federal defense in the Southern District of New York, and the Federal Public Defender Office in Los Angeles.
She later became Chief of Training at the Federal Public Defender Office in Los Angeles. In that role, she developed trial-skills and legal-training programs for attorneys. The position combined courtroom experience with another part of her career that became increasingly important: teaching other lawyers.
That background gives Yazmin Cader Frazier a professional identity that is very different from the entertainment world associated with Kevin Frazier. Her work has centered on courts, constitutional rights, criminal defense, and the training of advocates.
Teaching and Training the Next Generation of Lawyers
Cader’s experience has also reached law schools and professional training programs.
The ACLU says she has taught at NYU School of Law, UCLA School of Law, and Wayne State University Law School. She has also helped train lawyers through organizations such as Gideon’s Promise, the National Criminal Defense College, and Harvard Law School’s Trial Advocacy Workshop.
Her teaching work fits naturally with the training responsibilities she held as a federal public defender. Instead of keeping courtroom knowledge inside one office, she has spent years sharing practical skills with students, public defenders, and other attorneys.
That focus on mentorship remains part of her public-service work today.
Building a Women-Owned Trial Firm
In 2019, Cader and attorney Christine Adams co-founded Cader Adams Trial Lawyers in Los Angeles.
Yale describes the firm as a women-owned litigation boutique. Its work included serious civil and criminal matters, white-collar cases, and counseling organizations on racial equity and workplace culture.
Private practice gave her a different platform from public defense, but her work still stayed close to the same themes that shaped her earlier career.
During this period, she also served on public committees in Los Angeles. Those included the Los Angeles Board of Police Commission’s Advisory Committee on Building Trust and Equity and the Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent’s Reimagining School Safety Task Force.
These roles connected her legal experience with broader debates about policing, trust, racial equity, and the role of law enforcement in schools.
Joining the ACLU
Yazmin Cader Frazier moved into national ACLU leadership in 2021.
The organization announced that year that she would become a Deputy Legal Director and lead the Trone Center for Justice and Equality. The center’s work covers major criminal-justice and racial-justice issues.
Her role placed her at the center of national legal and policy work involving policing, incarceration, racial equity, capital punishment, and other civil-liberties questions.
The ACLU later credited her with helping lead responses to several major national developments. Those included work after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, challenges to racial-equity and diversity initiatives, public-safety policy, and federal death-penalty issues.
Her responsibilities expanded again in 2026.
A Major ACLU Promotion in 2026
In July 2026, the American Civil Liberties Union named Cader Deputy Executive Director for Program, Strategy, and Culture.
The new position moved her beyond legal leadership alone. According to the ACLU, she now works closely with the executive director and senior leadership to guide strategy, strengthen organizational culture, and connect work across the organization.
That promotion is one of the clearest updates for readers looking for Yazmin Cader Frazier today.
It also reflects the breadth of her experience. By that point, her career had included federal civil rights litigation, public defense, attorney training, private practice, organizational leadership, and years of work on national civil-liberties issues.
The role makes her one of the senior leaders of one of the best-known civil rights organizations in the United States.
Recognition in the Legal Community
Her work has earned recognition beyond the organizations that employed her.
Cader is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, a professional organization whose membership includes experienced trial lawyers from the United States and Canada.
She has also spoken at law schools, conferences, and public events about civil rights, criminal justice, leadership, and legal advocacy.
Yale Law School has highlighted her career as an example of public-service leadership, while the ACLU regularly features her in its public work and commentary.
For Yazmin Cader Frazier, professional visibility comes mainly through law and civil rights rather than entertainment coverage.
Marriage to Kevin Frazier
Many people first encounter her name because she is married to Kevin Frazier, the longtime television host associated with Entertainment Tonight.
The couple married in 2006. Kevin has spoken publicly about his wife’s legal career, describing the contrast between his entertainment work and her work as a public defender.
A 2012 TV Guide interview referred to Cader as a Yale-educated public defender. Kevin spoke warmly about her education and the seriousness of her professional world.
The relationship brings together two very different careers. He built his public profile in sports and entertainment media. She spent much of the same period in courtrooms, legal offices, classrooms, and civil rights organizations.
Despite those different professional paths, they have appeared together publicly over the years. In a 2024 professional post, Cader referred to Kevin as her husband while writing about an Executive Leadership Council gala that he hosted.
Their Children and Family Life
Yazmin Cader Frazier and Kevin have two sons together, Shane and Reece.
Entertainment Tonight announced the birth of Reece Cader Frazier in July 2010 and identified Shane as the couple’s older son. Kevin also has an older son, Tony, from a previous relationship.
The family has occasionally appeared in entertainment coverage, but Cader’s public identity remains closely tied to her professional work.
That balance is part of what makes her profile unusual. She is connected to a highly visible television personality, yet her own career developed in a field where reputation is built through legal work, public service, teaching, and institutional leadership.
Her Professional Name and Public Identity
Readers may notice two spellings in search results: Yazmin Cader Frazier and Yasmin Cader.
Her professional work appears under the name Yasmin Cader. That is the name used by the ACLU, Yale Law School, and other legal institutions.
The longer form, Yazmin Cader Frazier, appears more often in searches connected with Kevin Frazier and entertainment coverage.
Understanding that difference connects the two sides of her public profile. Someone searching the family name may be looking for Kevin Frazier’s wife, while someone searching Yasmin Cader is more likely to find decades of legal and civil rights work.
The Work That Defines Her Public Career
Yazmin Cader Frazier has spent most of her professional life working on issues that affect people inside the justice system.
Her path has moved from the Justice Department to public defense, attorney training, private practice, and senior ACLU leadership. Each stage has involved a different kind of responsibility, but the larger theme has stayed consistent: civil rights, fair treatment, legal representation, and institutional change.
Her career also shows how public-interest lawyers can move between courtroom work and national leadership without leaving the core issues that first brought them into the field.
As of 2026, she is helping shape strategy and culture across the ACLU while continuing to bring decades of courtroom and civil-rights experience into that work.
A Life That Reaches Far Beyond a Celebrity Marriage
Search interest often starts with Kevin Frazier, but the deeper story is the legal career beside that famous name.
Yazmin Cader Frazier graduated from Howard University and Yale Law School, worked in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, spent 23 years in public defense, trained lawyers, co-founded a trial firm, and rose into senior ACLU leadership.
Her marriage and family are part of her story, but they are not the whole story. Her strongest public legacy comes from decades spent in law, civil rights, training, and leadership.
For another profile of a woman whose own career extends well beyond a famous spouse, read our Nia Renee Hill story and keep exploring people-first celebrity coverage on LakewoodScoop.co.uk.