Marianne Engelman Lado
Lecturer in Law
Marianne Engelman Lado joined Earthjustice in 2010 as Chair of the
Environmental Health Practice Group, focusing on toxics, pesticides,
waste, the health impacts of industrial agriculture, civil rights
enforcement, and the effects of environmental contamination on
vulnerable and overburdened populations. She previously served for ten
years as General Counsel at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest
(NYLPI), a non-profit civil rights law firm, where she directed a legal
and advocacy program focused on racial and ethnic disparities in access
to health care, environmental justice, and disability rights. She began
her legal career as a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and
Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), where she represented clients attempting
to break barriers of access to health care and quality education. In
this capacity Marianne was responsible for developing a health care
docket aimed at addressing the scarcity of health resources in medically
underserved communities; discriminatory practices by the health care
industry; lack of access to reproductive health services; and related
issues of environmental justice. She also organized the legal effort in
the late 1990s to save the public hospitals in New York City. Marianne
played a key role in the development of the National Campaign to Restore
Civil Rights, a nationwide effort to address the rollback of civil
rights by the courts. Marianne lectures widely and has taught graduate
and undergraduate level courses in public administration, health policy,
family law, and education law at the School of Law at Seton Hall
University and at Baruch College. She holds a B.A. in government from
Cornell University, a J.D. from the University of California at
Berkeley, and an M.A. in Politics from Princeton University. Her
publications include “Unfinished Agenda: The Need for Civil Rights
Litigation to Address Continuing Patterns of Race Discrimination and
Inequalities in Access to Health Care,” “Breaking the Barriers of Access
to Health Care: A Discussion of the Role of Civil Rights Litigation and
the Relationship Between Burdens of Proof and the Experience of
Denial,” “Evaluating Systems for Delivering Legal Services to the Poor:
Conceptual and Methodological Considerations” (co-authored with Gregg G.
Van Ryzin), and “A Question of Justice: African-American Legal
Perspectives on the 1883
Civil Rights Cases.”
