Before joining the Cato Institute, Boden was a civil rights attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, where she led the organization’s equality and opportunity program. She also co‐created the podcast Dissed, which tells the stories behind infamous Supreme Court dissents.
In her decade before joining Cato, Boden represented entrepreneurs in challenges to onerous occupational licensing laws, anti‐competitive titling restrictions, and Certificate of Need (CON) programs. She developed nearly a dozen cases challenging CON laws across the country, leading to legislative reform in Montana, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Among her other wins are a case invalidating busking restrictions in Houston, several appellate decisions opening up the courthouse doors to civil rights plaintiffs, and legislative repeal of Virginia’s happy hour advertising restrictions.
Her writings on law and liberty have been featured in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and more, and she has appeared on Headline News, CBS News, Reason TV, Newsmax, and John Stossel. In 2020, Anastasia was featured on Libertarian Party presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen’s Supreme Court shortlist.
Boden earned her BA with dean’s honors from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her JD from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was research assistant to professor Randy E. Barnett—the intellectual “godfather” of the constitutional challenge to Obamacare.