Delaney Barker

The Project

Delaney (she/her) provides legal representation and advocacy for Michigan’s low-income and minority voters to access absentee or in-person ballots without intimidation and tactics intended to subvert election results.

During the 2022 election, partisan operatives trained poll workers and poll watchers to accuse individuals of voter fraud and escalate the situation by calling the police with the apparent intention of sending them to flood high-minority areas to disrupt elections and harass voters. Delaney’s project seeks to combat new forms of voter intimidation and disenfranchisement that disproportionately target low-income voters and voters of color.

Fellowship Plans

Building on the ACLU of Michigans work protecting voters, Delaney will sue individuals and organizations seeking to suppress the vote of marginalized voters and election clerks who threaten voters’ access to absentee ballots or early voting. Additionally, she will work with grassroots organizers and partner organizations to engage with clerks statewide and ensure that voters can exercise their right to an absentee ballot or early voting. During her fellowship, Delaney will also litigate on behalf of voters who have been intimidated by poll watchers or other actors.

The Project

Shawntel (she/her/hers), in partnership with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, advocates on behalf of Filipino migrants who are identified as survivors of labor trafficking by providing them with holistic legal representation to redress the economic and emotional harm they have endured throughout their trafficking.

The Philippines is among the top five nationalities of identified labor trafficking victims in the United States, found most often in domestic labor work such as caregiving and housekeeping. These jobs are often accompanied by abhorrent and abusive living conditions. Filipino victims of labor trafficking need comprehensive, culturally responsive, and linguistically appropriate legal services that combat obstacles resulting from their victimization. This expanded access to justice can lessen the vulnerabilities often exploited by traffickers and empower Filipino survivors of trafficking by securing their economic stability and immigration status.

Fellowship Plans

With a focus on community outreach, Shawntel will deepen partnerships with organizations in Southern California actively involved in advocating for Filipino workers’ rights by establishing an extensive referral system and creating the first on-site and virtual human trafficking legal services focused on the Filipino community in this region. Through these legal clinics, Filipino victims of trafficking can access holistic civil legal support to overcome barriers such as immigration status that are often exploited by traffickers. With the assistance of pro bono attorneys, Shawntel will address wage theft and public benefits claims and assist victims in accessing immigration relief. Shawntel, who is fluent in Tagalog, will expand outreach to the Filipino migrant community by providing free legal services and linguistic education for monolingual Tagalog speakers.

Raised by Filipino immigrants, Shawntel is grateful to have the opportunity to advance economic justice for the Filipino migrant community and help tackle the largely unaddressed issue that is labor trafficking. She hopes that this project can serve as a sustainable model for establishing additional human trafficking clinics focused on providing comprehensive legal services to other vulnerable populations.

Media

The Project

Olivia’s (she/her/hers) project will help launch the first restorative justice diversionary program in Georgia that addresses felony harms by adults: Restorative Justice Georgia.

Georgia has the highest rate of correctional control in the country. There are 527,000 people in prisons and jails or under probation or parole in Georgia, and 4.6 million individuals have a Georgia criminal record. Young, low-income, Black, and Latinx people are disproportionately impacted by correctional control.

For victims of crime, the criminal legal system does not adequately meet their needs. Research shows that most victims would prefer to hold people accountable through means beyond prison. However, there are currently no mechanisms to prioritize the healing and needs of the person harmed while giving the person responsible for the harm the chance to make amends and take accountability.

Olivia’s experiences as a Black woman have informed her of the trauma that the criminal legal system can inflict through surveillance and incarceration, especially in low-income communities of color. This has motivated Olivia to develop alternative approaches to harm that allow for accountability and healing.

Fellowship Plans

During her Fellowship, Olivia will facilitate the transition of cases from the criminal legal system into the restorative justice process. She will work with criminal legal system actors to ensure the restorative justice process is fulfilled successfully, and to increase access to the program. Olivia will also engage community members to spread knowledge about restorative justice and advocate for policy changes to expand access to restorative justice throughout Georgia.

The Project

Makiah’s project aims to eliminate school discipline policies and practices that disproportionately harm girls of color in Georgia and other southern states through action research, community education, direct advocacy, and policy advocacy.

Racial and gender biases influence how school discipline policies are drafted and implemented nationally. Southern states, like Georgia, are responsible for staggering rates of exclusionary discipline of Black students. As a result, many girls of color—particularly Black girls—are overdisciplined in southern schools and punished pursuant to vague and often sweeping policies in decisions that go unchallenged. These disparities have immediate and lasting negative consequences for girls of color, their families, and their communities.

Makiah grew up as a deaf Black girl in the South and belongs to a family of proud and passionate educators. Makiah’s family and her time as a teacher inspires her to fight for education access and justice.

Fellowship Plans

During her Fellowship, Makiah will develop a legal participatory action research project to collect the stories and experiences of girls of color in Georgia schools and work within impacted communities to generate solutions. She will engage in direct advocacy on behalf of students who are harmed by harsh or punitive disciplinary decisions. Additionally, she will develop know-your-rights workshops for girls of color and their families as well as trainings and toolkits for educators and advocates.

The Project

Alexis’s (she/her) project will address racial bullying in Massachusetts’s public schools through direct representation, Know Your Rights training, and working with school districts to implement race-responsive anti-bullying policies.

In the 2018–2019 school year, 5.2 million students ages 12 to 18 reported that they experienced some form of harassment or bullying in school, with one in four experiencing bullying related to their race or national origin. In highly segregated schools, racial bullying and harassment are a prevalent issue. In a sample of Greater Boston school districts, several districts had a student populations with 70% (or more) white students. Other school districts had a Black or Hispanic population of 10% or less. Incidents of racial bullying and feelings of racial isolation can increase where students of color attend predominantly white schools.

Racial bullying is a unique problem that needs a comprehensive response to seek immediate relief for the students and a systemic approach to change the culture within schools.

Alexis’s experience as a teacher and advocate motivates her commitment to working with students, families, and districts to promote educational equity for students of color.

Fellowship Plans

During her Fellowship, Alexis will provide direct representation to impacted students and families. She will send demand letters to school districts to secure enforcement of anti-discrimination and anti-bullying laws. Additionally, Alexis will create a Know Your Rights guide to empower students and families in the K-12 system to reference when experiencing racial bullying. This effort will target districts that have high rates of racial bullying. She will work closely with school staff on preventative measures they can and should take to reduce the racial harassment and isolation of their students.

The Project

Breanna (she/her/hers) will empower tribes and tribal families to provide trauma-informed education advocacy for tribal children in California’s child welfare system.

Historically, the United States has used “education” to assimilate Native children, take tribal land, and disrupt tribal economies, and these events still affect tribes and Native children today. Native people have the highest rates of trauma and child welfare involvement, and the lowest rates of academic achievement compared to any other racial group. Without trauma-informed education advocacy, Native children in the child welfare system are especially at-risk for not being able to access an education.

Breanna is continually inspired by the child welfare advocacy provided by tribes and California Tribal Families Coalition. It is a privilege to help expand this trauma informed advocacy into education systems, which have continued to fail tribal children.

Fellowship Plans

Through her project, Breanna will identify tribal children within California’s child welfare system who are being unlawfully denied an adequate and trauma-informed education. She will then work with each child’s tribe to ensure that education advocacy support is provided. Breanna will also raise awareness of new caselaw establishing that trauma is a disability for special education purposes and provide comprehensive special education trainings and resources for tribes and tribal families. If necessary, Breanna will collaborate with pro bono attorneys and other non-profit organizations to pursue impact litigation on behalf of tribes, tribal parents, or education rights holders for tribal children.

The Project

Natalie (she/her/hers) will work with the New Haven Legal Assistance Association (NHLAA) and a network of community partners to offer holistic civil legal representation and self-advocacy tools to low-income residents of New Haven, Connecticut who have been involved in the criminal legal system.

Structural racism is a defining feature of the United States criminal legal system, with punishment concentrated overwhelmingly in low-income Black and Latinx communities. New Haven, a majority non-white community, has the highest incarceration rate of any county in the state of Connecticut. Disrupting the racial and economic inequities perpetuated by mass incarceration requires more than reforming the criminal legal system—it requires meeting the needs of people returning from incarceration, including their civil legal needs.

By working in partnership with her directly impacted neighbors in New Haven, Connecticut, Natalie’s Fellowship project aims to shift power and resources to communities harmed by mass incarceration, intervene in the reproduction of racial and socioeconomic inequity, and instead, support community flourishing.

Fellowship Plans

Natalie will provide individual representation, develop a holistic civil-legal screening tool specific to the needs of people returning from incarceration, and build a reciprocal referral pipeline between NHLAA, public defenders, and social service providers serving New Haven residents with criminal-legal system involvement. Natalie will also develop educational and pro se materials on high-priority civil-legal needs and hold a series of workshops with community partners on these topics. By equipping people who are returning from incarceration into the community with holistic civil-legal representation and resources for self-advocacy, this project supports residents’ stability in the community and advances racial and socioeconomic justice.

The Project

Conner’s project at Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights will address polling place closures and last-minute changes to expand voting access and combat disenfranchisement for Chicago’s low-income communities of color.

Late polling place changes, closures, and consolidations make it harder for already marginalized groups—including voters of color, low-income voters, disabled voters, elderly voters, and voters with limited English proficiency—to access the ballot on Election Day. In the past few years, Chicago voters have experienced a drastic reduction in the number of available polling places, with polling place changes often occurring close to elections, making it nearly impossible for the changes to be challenged or for voters to learn about how they have been impacted. These changes and closures often lead to longer lines, increased transportation costs, and confusion over where to cast a ballot—all of which disenfranchise many otherwise eligible voters.

Fellowship Plans

Conner will work directly with the communities most impacted by polling place changes and closures by leading know-your-rights campaigns and engaging with community partners to reduce confusion over where to cast a ballot. He will also advocate for election officials to equitably select polling locations and ensure they are accessible for Black, Latinx, and Asian voters—particularly on Chicago’s South and West Sides. Additionally, Conner will strategically use public records requests and develop litigation templates to facilitate quick responses to potential voting rights violations.

Conner’s belief that all communities deserve political representation strengthens his commitment to protecting the roots of the democratic process through voting rights and election administration work. He was born and raised in the Midwest and is excited to return as an Equal Justice Works Fellow.

Media

The Project

Anna (she/her) will combat the independent state legislature theory by leading the Constitutional Accountability Center’s first Election Amicus Project and filing amicus briefs in courts across the country in litigation surrounding the 2024 election.

The independent state legislature theory (ISLT) is the latest threat to multiracial democracy. ISLT posits that under the Constitution, the state legislature is the only state body with the power to regulate federal elections, and therefore, state courts cannot intervene to enforce state voting rights protections. Under the logic of ISLT, federal courts are the only check on states’ voter suppression—which, given the federal judiciary’s growing hostility to voting rights, is frightening.

In 2023, the Supreme Court will address ISLT head-on in Moore v. Harper, which has been called “without question the most significant case in the history of our nation for American democracy.” Whatever the Court decides in Moore, the questions it leaves open will be heavily litigated as states attempt to use ISLT to disenfranchise voters before the 2024 election.

Fellowship Plans

During her Fellowship, Anna will spearhead the Constitutional Accountability Center’s first Election Amicus Project targeted at protecting voting rights during an election year. She will strategically draft and file amicus briefs in courts across the country to limit ISLT’s impact on the 2024 election. Anna will also publish a white paper on ISLT aimed at educating lawyers, scholars, and organizers about ISLT.

Coming from an immigrant family, Anna understands the power of being able to participate in our democracy. She is dedicated to ensuring that marginalized communities can exercise their right to vote.

The Project

Jillian (she/her/hers) will advocate on behalf of underserved communities in Manchester, New Hampshire to expose and tackle environmental and health harms from an incinerator emitting toxic “forever chemicals” and other pollutants.

The City of Manchester owns and operates an incinerator that burns waste from its sewage treatment plant and emits toxic substances, including PFAS, which are long-lasting, health-harming chemicals often referred to as “forever chemicals.” PFAS emissions from Manchester’s sludge-burning incinerator contribute to the cumulative environmental impacts that threaten the health of communities of color and low-income communities in Manchester—communities that experience a disproportionate burden of environmental harm. Despite the pressing need for environmental justice advocacy in the area, neither the City of Manchester nor New Hampshire has an enforceable environmental justice policy to protect communities experiencing disproportionate health and environmental harms.

Jillian chose to attend law school because she hoped to harness the law to secure environmental justice protections for communities that are disproportionately impacted by environmental burdens. Speaking with community members about the many environmental inequities that harm low-income residents and residents of color motivated her to pursue an Equal Justice Works Fellowship that addresses health-harming toxic pollution in Manchester.

Fellowship Plans

Through education, direct engagement, and legal advocacy, Jillian will amplify community voices in Manchester to address health and environmental inequities caused by the City’s sludge incinerator and potentially other health-harming facilities. Jillian’s project will also use public outreach, legal advocacy, and engagement with government officials to formulate strategies to reduce and eliminate “forever chemicals” from products so that they do not reach the City’s waste facilities. Jillian may also engage with community members and lawmakers to develop an enforceable statewide environmental justice policy.