Mekela Panditharatne serves as senior counsel for the Brennan Center\u2019s Elections & Government Program, where her work focuses on election reform, election security, governance, voting, truth and information.<\/p>\n
Mekela was previously an attorney with Earthjustice, where she engaged in a wide range of federal litigation and policy work. She served as counsel for Native American Tribes challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers\u2019 approval of the Line 3 pipeline and was counsel for the NAACP in a lawsuit seeking stronger federal standards for lead in water. She also served as lead counsel on a federal Civil Rights Act matter, successfully guaranteeing the right for Spanish-language and other immigrant communities to participate in environmental decision-making in the state of Texas.<\/p>\n
Prior to Earthjustice, Mekela was an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council where she helped lead the organization\u2019s work on post-disaster environmental and governance issues in Puerto Rico and contributed to efforts to abate severe drinking water pollution nationwide.<\/p>\n
Mekela\u2019s writing has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN Opinion and NBC News. She has co-authored nationally recognized reports and her writing has been entered into the Congressional Record in Congress.<\/p>\n
Mekela holds a J.D. from Yale Law School where she was an editor on the Yale Journal of Regulation.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"