Dear NYLS Community,
We are pleased to announce that Britney Wilson has been appointed as a full Professor of Law with a Long-Term Contract (LTC) after a vote of the tenured and LTC faculty and approval by the Board of Trustees. Please join us in congratulating her. Professor Wilson is a deeply valued member of our faculty and NYLS is fortunate she will be part of our community for years to come.
Professor Wilson joined NYLS in 2021 as an Associate Professor of Law and the Founding Director of the Civil Rights and Disability Justice Clinic, an academic-year-long experiential course in which students engage in federal class action (“impact”) litigation and other forms of strategic policy advocacy. Professor Wilson and her students are currently litigating a class action suit against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Access-A-Ride program, a paratransit service for people with disabilities, among other cases and advocacy projects. In 2022, Professor Wilson secured a $300,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to support the work of the clinic. She has also taught race, bias, and advocacy and organized and led high-profile symposia and events drawing attendees and speakers from around the nation at NYLS on civil rights, disability, and social justice issues.
Born with Cerebral Palsy, Professor Wilson has written and spoken extensively about disability, and the intersection of race and disability for various outlets, including The Nation Magazine, This American Life, and NPR. She is also an interdisciplinary scholar whose research aims to analyze and bridge the gap between civil rights, racial justice, and disability advocacy. In 2023 she was selected as a Health Law Scholar by the American Society for Law, Medicine, and Ethics and the Saint Louis Center for Health Law Studies. This year, she was the Mary Frances Berry Fellow in the J. Willard Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History, one of 12 scholars from around the world to be selected by the American Society for Legal History. Her scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review,the UCLA Law Review, the Journal of Legal Education, and the Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice.
Additionally, among other institutional and service roles, Professor Wilson serves or has served in several leadership roles in the wider community. She currently serves as the Secretary for the Association of American Law Schools Section on Disability Law. She volunteers with the American Association of People with Disabilities as a mentor for students with disabilities in their summer internship program. She was also previously a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York. She has testified about issues facing people with disabilities before local, national, and international governing bodies, including the New York City Council, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Before NYLS, Professor Wilson was a staff attorney at the National Center for Law and Economic Justice (NCLEJ) where she litigated federal civil rights class action litigation concerning excessive fines and fees, discriminatory policing, and disability rights, particularly the provision of home and community-based services to people with disabilities and disability discrimination in healthcare.
Before NCLEJ, Professor Wilson was a Bertha Justice Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and a Marvin M. Karpatkin Fellow in the Racial Justice Program at the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) where she litigated a range of complex federal litigation on racial justice issues including discriminatory policing, abusive immigration detention practices, the school-to-prison pipeline, the criminalization of poverty, fair housing and lending, and inclusion in higher education.
Also an accomplished writer and artist, Professor Wilson has published short stories, poetry, and creative nonfiction essays. She was a featured poet on the HBO series Brave New Voices. She holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a B.A. from Howard University, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa.
Please join us in congratulating Professor Wilson on this well-earned appointment and we look forward to many years of impactful work and scholarship.
Dean Anthony W. Crowell
Dean of Faculty William LaPiana
Senior Associate Dean Matt Gewolb
Professor Ann F. Thomas
Chair, Faculty Committee on Promotion and Tenure (2022-2025)