National Youth Rights Association

The National Youth Rights Association is the nation’s premier youth rights organization. NYRA is a youth-led national non-profit organization dedicated to fighting for the civil rights and liberties of young people. In the grand tradition of past civil rights movements, we seek to write a new chapter and create a world where people are not judged by their birth date, but by their talent, their intelligence, their integrety, and their competence.

Our mission centers on challenging discrimination against youth, both in law and in attitudes. Many of the basic freedoms afforded to Americans in the Bill of Rights are withheld from young people with troubling consequences for youth and for society as a whole. NYRA has members in all 50 states, over 10,000 in total, and chapters from coast to coast. We work to lower the voting age, end the 21 drinking age, repeal curfew laws, protect student rights, and fight against ageism whereever we find it.