Marianne Engelman Lado
Marianne Engelman Lado
Marianne Engelman Lado is an attorney, professor, and environmental justice scholar. She works in the Biden Administration as the Deputy General Counsel for Environmental Initiatives for the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Her dedication to helping communities through law and policy has taken her to positions at the NAACP, Earthjustice, Columbia University, Yale Law School, and the New York Lawyers for Public Interest, among others. Engelman Lado has authored numerous works on civil rights litigation and environmental justice. Throughout her career, she has provided consulting on civil rights, environmental justice, racial justice, and related issues.
“There’s no need to try to be concerned with finding the one right path” - Marianne Engelman-Lado, 2023.
Van Ryzin, G., Engelman-Lado, M., 1999. Evaluating Systems for Delivering Legal Service to the Poor: Conceptual and Methodological Considerations, Fordham Law Review, 67(5). https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol67/iss5/30
Engelman-Lado, M., 1994. 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, Brooklyn Law Review.
Engelman-Lado, M., 2017. Toward Civil Rights Enforcement in the Environmental Justice Context - Step One: Acknowledging the Problem. Fordham Environmental Law Review.
Engelman-Lado, M., 2019. No More Excuses: Building a New Vision of Civil Rights Enforcement in the Context of Environmental Justice, University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Social Change.
Engelman-Lado, M., 2001. Unfinished Agenda: The Need for Civil Rights Litigation to Address Race Discrimination and Inequalities in Health Care Delivery, Texas Forum on Civil Liberties Civil Rights.
Marianne Engelman Lado spent time outside as a child, exploring the Catskills with her grandparents, but did not plan to go into the environmental field. Her interests in civil rights and racial equity motivated her to pursue a Bachelor of Arts in Government, which she earned in 1984 from Cornell University. Engelman Lado went directly to law school, earning her J.D. at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Law in 1987. She earned a Master of Arts in Politics from Princeton University in 1989. Engelman-Lado’s civil rights and racial equity work eventually led her to environmental justice.
After graduating from Princeton in 1989, Engelman Lado started her career at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as an Assistant Counsel. At the NAACP, she worked on a program that addressed the intersection of race and poverty. Cases she worked on include Sheff v. O’Neil, a case that established educational rights in Connecticut and one that successfully stopped then-Mayor Giuliani from privatizing the NYC public hospitals. At NAACP, she also started working on environmental justice issues.
In 1997, she joined the Baruch College School of Public Affairs at the City University of New York (CUNY) as an Assistant Professor. In 1999, she worked as a General Counsel at New York Lawyers for Public Interest. While in this role, she Co-Founded the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights and worked on the organization’s environmental justice, health justice, and disability rights programs. In 2000, Engelman Lado Co-Founded the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights, where she remained a Consultant until 2013.
In 2009, she joined Seton Hall University School of Law as a Visiting Assistant Professor and, in 2010, was promoted to Adjunct Professor. In 2010, Engelman Lado became a Staff Attorney at Earthjustice. With Earthjustice, she worked with environmental justice and other advocacy groups to address the toxicity of dispersants used to break up oil after oil spills, the use of leaded aviation fuel, and the impacts of confined animal feeding operations (CAOs). With the organization, she helped successfully challenge a permit given by the State of Arkansas to a hog facility on the banks of a tributary to the Buffalo National River. In 2013, she began a position at Columbia Law School, where she lectured on environmental health and environmental justice.
In 2016, Engelman Lado left Columbia Law School and Earthjustice, and in 2017, she became a Visiting Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where she launched the Environmental Justice Clinic. The clinic was cross-listed at the Law School, the School of the Environment, the School of Public Health, and Vermont Law School. Students enrolled in the course worked with community groups nationwide on legislation, civil rights cases, administrative advocacy, and litigation on various E.J issues. From 2018 to 2019, Engelman Lado contributed to the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, building the capacity of environmental justice groups.
From 2019 to 2021, Engelman Lado was the Associate Director of the Environmental Justice Clinic at the Vermont Law School. In 2021, the Biden Administration named Engelman Lado Deputy General Counsel for Environmental Initiatives at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In this role, she was also the Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator of the EPA’s new Office of Environmental Justice and Civil Rights.
Engelman Lado cites several mentors at the NAACP, including Julius Chambers, the Director Counsel, and John Charles Boger and Ronald Ellis, senior attorneys. She worked with Julius on two articles before joining the Legal Defense Fund staff and stated that he provided her with opportunities to grow and take responsibility. Her academic mentors include Professor Albert Raboteu, who was then Chair of the Religion Department at Princeton. Raboteu helped walk her through reading courses on African American history with patience and kindness. Law professor David Daube also inspired her to understand the complexities of interpretation.
In addition to being a mentee, Engelman Lado has had the opportunity to mentor students, fellows, and junior attorneys, some of whom later became colleagues. She says that one of the great joys of clinical legal education is the opportunity to work with and mentor students, “[getting] to know them not only in the classroom setting but through our work on cases and projects” (2023).
Engelman Lado states that “there’s no need to try to be concerned with finding the one right path” because there are many ways to get to where you want to go (2023). She referred to her experience at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund when she joined several other new lawyers, and each had taken a different path to get there – some clerked or moved from law firms or small public interest practices. Instead, Engelman Lado attended graduate school and interned. Engelman Lado notes the importance of taking the next step to get the most out of your actions.
Elleston, G. Burlington Official Luke McGowan to be Senior Adviser in White House [Photo]. VTDigger. 2021, February 3. Retrieved November 2023 from https://vtdigger.org/2021/02/03/burlington-official-luke-mcgowan-to-be-senior-adviser-in-biden-white-house/
Marrianne Engelman Lado. LinkedIn. n.d. Retrieved November 2023 from https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianne-engelman-lado-6096505/
Survey and interviews conducted by Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Sustainability Initiative staff. 2022-2023. Yale University-School of the Environment. New Haven, Connecticut.
Marianne Engelman Lado. N.d.https://www.vermontlaw.edu/sites/default/files/2019-10/EngelmanLadoCV.pdf