State Civil Rights Work

This event will be a panel on innovative civil rights work in state Attorney General offices. We’ll hear from practitioners on the ways state civil rights protections have extended beyond the protections provided by federal law, and how states are increasingly active players in the enforcement space separate and apart from the federal government. It’ll also be a great opportunity to learn about unique opportunities to get involved in civil rights work now and after graduation.

We're also hosting a lunch with a few of our panelists after the event so students can learn more about state civil rights work and build relationships with our panelists.

Our panelists:

Sundeep Iyer is the Director of the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights. Prior to joining the Office of the Attorney General, Sundeep Iyer was a senior associate at Hogan Lovells US LLP where he served as a special attorney for the State of Minnesota in the prosecution of the four former police officers charged in connection with the death of George Floyd, and represented federal death-row inmates in a challenge to the Trump Administration’s federal lethal injection protocol, among other matters. He received his A.B. from Harvard College and J.D. from Yale Law School.

Matthew Menendez is an Assistant Attorney General in the New York Attorney General's Law Enforcement Misconduct Investigative Office. Matthew previously served as counsel for the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, where his work focused on judicial administration and reforming the criminal justice process. He graduated from Swarthmore College and the NYU School of Law.

Yasmin Dagne is an Assistant Attorney General in the New York Attorney General's Civil Rights Bureau. After graduating from the Law School, she was the Leonard H. Sandler Fellow at Human Rights Watch where she investigated the impacts of land loss and village resettlement for a large hydroelectric dam in Guinea. She holds a law degree from Columbia University School of Law and a bachelor's degree from Princeton University.