Melina A. Healey - Director of Clinical Programs and Assistant Clinical Professor

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Melina A. Healey is an Assistant Professor and Director of Clinical Programs. She teaches the Education Justice and Advanced In-House Clinics at Touro. In Professor Healey’s clinics, law students represent young people with disabilities in family court and advocate for their special education needs in school. The Education Justice Clinic also hosts a novel autism-focused medical-legal partnership with Touro’s Graduate Schools of Occupational Therapy and Applied Behavioral Analysis. Professor Healey’s clinic has regularly secured over $1 million in educational services for clients each semester.

Professor Healey previously served on the faculties of NYU School of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law; and Loyola University Chicago School of Law. In addition to her academic appointments, Professor Healey has also practiced law as an Equal Justice Works Fellow with Loyola University’s Center for the Human Rights of Children and with Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York. In 2015, Professor Healey worked with her clinic students, tribal leaders, and community-based advocacy groups to draft Montana’s landmark first tribal human trafficking law. Professor Healey also founded and directed the Native Trafficking Project at Loyola University Chicago, which provides legal, indigenous healing, and social services to Native American survivors of trafficking in Chicago. Professor Healey began her legal career as a clerk for the Honorable John T. Nixon of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. She partners with Tribes on civil rights and racial justice advocacy and represents incarcerated Native people in religious rights; tribal benefits; and family law issues. Her work on behalf of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, and NPR, among other media outlets.

Professor Healey’s publications can be found here https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=2396330.