When I learned that my grandparents had gotten their first doses of the COVID vaccine, I cried with relief. After a year of unceasing trauma, loss, and fear, it felt like the first sign of a turning tide. Then I started to wonder about current and former clients, and people I had heard call into…

The federal antitrust laws—three statutes enacted over a century ago—are in the spotlight. The year 2020 brought a new reckoning with corporate power and a resurgent interest in using antitrust law as a force for populist change. The “hipster antitrust” movement argues that the focus of antitrust policy should not be limited to market power…

This article is a reply to Professor Suja Thomas’s article “The Customer Caste: Legal Discrimination by Public Businesses.” This reply adds another compelling piece of evidence to Professor Thomas’s thesis by arguing that the federal courts have defied the original meaning of Title II’s central guarantee of “full and equal enjoyment” of public accommodations. That…

This piece is dedicated in honor of the lives lost in Atlanta, Georgia on March 16th, 2021 due to more senseless anti-Asian violence. All U.S. federal and state entities should disaggregate data on the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. Currently, reports divided by racial categories often conceal the major differences in the AAPI population…

While women have been running for elected office in the United States since 1866, the growth in female representation has been incremental at best. Despite the fact that women represent over 50 percent of the United States’s population, women only make up 25 percent of Congress. Furthermore, women occupy less than 30 percent of state…

With multidistrict litigation, innovation is the name of the game. Congress recognized and addressed this crux when, in the face of the soon-to-be crumbling federal judiciary caused by an exponentially increasing federal docket, it passed the Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) Statute, codified at 23 U.S.C. § 1407. The MDL Statute authorizes the consolidation and coordination of…

The United States, through its international development agency USAID, is the largest donor in international family planning in the world, with an annual programmatic budget exceeding $600 million. However, since 1984, USAID’s funding for essential reproductive and sexual health services has come with strings attached in the form of the Global Gag Rule. At its…

Using the case study of Christa McAuliffe Intermediate School PTO, Inc. v. de Blasio, a lawsuit challenging New York City’s class-based policies to diversify its elite Specialized High Schools, this Essay explains that purported support for class-based affirmative action serves as a rhetorical smokescreen for eliminating Brown v. Board of Education’s promise of a racially…

Multidistrict litigation (MDL) has been described both as a “just and efficient” method of consolidating lawsuits and a judicial hell-hole akin to “the third level of Dante’s inferno.” While its normative value likely falls somewhere in the middle, it is no secret that multidistrict litigation involves “unorthodox” civil procedure. Judges attempting to wrangle the “Wild…

Despite the grave injuries suffered by individuals during the Capitol Hill riot, the context in which the riot originated may actually render IIED an inviable cause of action under extant case law. Against the backdrop of weeks—if not years—of polemic political discourse and alt-right protests, was the violence of January 6th actually outrageous? It certainly wasn’t unexpected, at least to those who had been paying attention…

MarketWatch made a startling error when it reported last year that Amazon’s Climate Pledge, created as a corporate commitment to carbon neutrality, had secured signatories like Microsoft and Unilever. Amazon’s Climate Pledge is measured against (and competes with) the timeline of the Paris Climate Agreement, a treaty from which the United States notably began its…

The Dalai Lama said that “a lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.” If that’s right, Black people should have immense distrust in our jury system and should feel insecure in the notion that it can deliver justice. Transparency is a necessary cornerstone of a well-functioning democracy. In the words…

As of December 2020, almost 1.9 million California tenants were behind on their rent, owing upwards of $1.67 billion to their landlords. Eviction cases in the state are projected to double over the next year. The individuals and families who are most at risk of mass displacement and crushing debt come from low-income, Black and…

Block grants can provide states with flexibility over SNAP requirements. However, keeping SNAP as an entitlement program will better provide benefits to individuals in need. Instead of reviving politically contentious debates each time Congress discusses SNAP block grants’ budget, Congress should maintain SNAP’s current entitlement program to better to prioritize anti-hunger goals…

HHS under the Trump administration finalized a new rule in June 2020 that officially stripped sexual orientation and gender identity from Section 1557’s safeguards. Whether the position taken by the Trump administration can stand is now the subject of several legal challenges, particularly in light of the recent Supreme Court decision Bostock v. Clayton Co., which held that sexual orientation…

The impact of slipping into poverty is all-encompassing; I mean that in the way that poverty will impact every step and crevice of your financial health, physical health, and mental health for the rest of your life. So why aren’t there more legal protections for poor Americans? As it stands, socioeconomic status is not a protected class under anti-discrimination laws. But it should be—and here’s why…

Individuals incarcerated in states that have enacted death penalty moratoria do not have their death sentences carried out in a timely and expeditious manner; instead, these incarcerated individuals sit on death row until they are either exonerated or die of natural causes. Individuals on death row in these states sit on death row for over two decades on average. This Article argues that capital…

My husband came running from his den, shouting something unintelligible. I stopped my work and looked up as he ran in. He said, “RBG died.” All I could do was stare at him. As one of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s many law clerks, and one of four who clerked for her in the 2001 Term, I felt a tremendous loss: historical, political, and personal. The past year has been the abyss of hell. From wildfires…

Anti-mask laws ban the wearing of masks in public. Popularly understood to prevent Klan activity, these laws are often vague, with a history of selective enforcement. They also clash with the exhortations to wear personal protective equipment to prevent the spread of COVID-19, which by summer of 2020 was encouraged by all states and required by many…

This Essay will connect the persistent strategies, logics, and identities created by settler colonialism to the disparate health impacts of COVID-19 in Indigenous, Black, and immigrant of color communities in the United States. By offering a framework that uncovers the root causes of ongoing patterns of systemic oppression, this Essay hopes to inspire reform efforts that seek to…