Shefali Milczarek-Desai
Shefali Milczarek-Desai is Associate Professor of Law and Co-Chair of the Bacon Immigration Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law. She is the recipient of the College of Law’s Distinguished Public Service Scholar Award and is a Sustainable Economies Law Center Fellow.
Professor Desai teaches employment and labor law courses, torts, and seminars on emerging issues at the intersection of migration and labor. Her scholarship employs critical legal frameworks to analyze workers’ rights, migrant child labor, immigrant and migrant (“im/migrant”) workers’ access to paid sick leave, the impact of immigration status in tort cases, and includes original, qualitative research examining legal issues facing im/migrant women who work as long-term aides in the health care industry. Her work has appeared in The California Law Review, The Columbia Human Rights Law Review, The UCLA Women’s Law Journal, The Arizona State Law Journal, The Arkansas Law Review, and The Journal of Tort Law, among others. Professor Desai also engages in creative projects such as the award-winning documentary film, Soledad, which is based on her representation of a young woman seeking asylum in the United States.
Previously, Professor Desai directed the Workers’ Rights Clinic and instructed students in client-centered and cross-cultural lawyering through representation of low-wage im/migrant workers throughout Arizona’s borderlands. She and her students worked on cases resulting in published decisions in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Arizona District Court upholding the rights of asylum seekers and im/migrant workers. Professor Desai also has created, launched and taught in-person and online immigration courses in the College of Law’s undergraduate law, master’s in legal studies, and foreign diplomat training programs.
Professor Desai’s clinical and online coursework reflects collaborations with Harvard Law School’s Labor and WorkLife Program, Northern Arizona University’s Center for Health Equity Research’s Immigrant Research, Practice and Policy Program, the Mexican Consulate, and the Tucson Immigrant Workers’ Cooperative Network. She regularly speaks and presents on issues affecting im/migrants including for the American Association of Law Schools, the American Public Health Association, the American Society on Aging, the Wisconsin International Law Journal, the American Constitution Society, the State Bar of Arizona, the Arizona Women Lawyer’s Association, and the University of Arizona.
Prior to teaching, Professor Desai assisted in litigating Flores v. Arizona, a U.S. Supreme Court case concerning the rights of English Language Learners in Arizona public schools, practiced at the DeConcini McDonald law firm where she was elected shareholder, and clerked for Vice-Chief Justice Ruth V. McGregor at the Arizona Supreme Court. She has been selected as an Alternate Fulbright Award Winner, Rhodes Scholarship Finalist, a Notre Dame Law School Feminist Jurisprudence Award Winner, and has published numerous articles and essays as well as a book manuscript selected as a finalist in an international competition. Her favorite pastimes include hiking, reading, and being with her family.
Representative Publications
- (Hidden) In Plain Sight: Migrant Child Labor and the New Economy of Exploitation, 77 Arkansas Law Review 345 (Summer 2024)
- Disentangling Immigration Policy from Tort Claims for Future Lost Wages, 16 Journal of Tort Law 255, (Winter 2024)
- Cited in The Restatement of the Law (Third): Remedies, American Law Institute (forthcoming)
- Opening the Pandemic Portal to Re-Imagine Paid Sick Leave for Immigrant Workers, 111 California Law Review 1171, (Fall 2023)
- Recognized and selected as “one of the best works of recent scholarship relating to Health Law” and peer reviewed by Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots), November 11, 2022 (text)
- Immigrant Workers’ Voices as Catalysts for Reform in the Long-Term Care Industry, 55 (3) Arizona State Law Journal 891 (Fall 2023) (co-author, with Tara Sklar)
- Based on original, qualitative research by the authors featured in the University of Arizona Hispanic Serving Institute Newsletter (text).
- Aquí Entre Nos (Just Between Us): Engagement of hotel housekeepers during sociopolitical and environmental change, Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action, Johns Hopkins University Press (forthcoming Fall 2023) (co-author, with Samantha Sabo, Dulce Jimenez, Alexandra Samarron, Omar Gomez, Melissa Liebert, Jill Guernsey De Zapien, Miriam Cuautle, Sara Shuman)
- The Los Angeles Times, “The U.S. needs paid sick leave. Here’s how to get it right,” May 24, 2022 (op-ed)
- OSHA has long failed vulnerable workers, Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2022
- The Return of Typhoid Mary? Immigrant Workers in Nursing Homes, Journal of Elder Policy (Fall 2021) (co-author with Professor Tara Sklar)
- Why nursing home aides exposed to Covid-19 aren't taking sick leave, The Conversation, November 23, 2020 (co-author with Professor Tara Sklar)
- America's immigrant workers left extremely vulnerable, Arizona Daily Star, May 24, 2020
- Soledad: A Documentary Film (2019) (written and co-produced) (directed by Lisa Molomot) (more info available at https://spark.adobe.com/page/ZWVxw5bNXFd5C/)
- Constitutional Cities: Sanctuary Jurisdictions, Local Voice, and Individual Liberty, 50 Colum. Hum. Rts. Rev. 1 (2018) (co-author with Toni Massaro)
- Constitutional Cities, Ms. Magazine Blog, (Aug. 25, 2017)
- (Re)Locating Other/Third World Women: An Alternative Approach to Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez's Construction of Gender, Culture and Identity, 13 UCLA Women's L.J. 235 (2004)
- Hearing Afghan Women's Voices: Feminist Theory’s Re-Conceptualization of Women's Human Rights, 16 Ariz. J. Int'l & Comp. L. 805 (1999)
- Complete List of Publications
Education
- J.D. James E. Rogers College of Law
2001, cum laude - M.A University of Arizona Women's Studies
2001 - Created and was first graduate of JD/MA Women’s Studies joint-degree program - B.A. Whittier College
1997, summa cum laude
Work Experience
- Associate Professor of Law
James E. Rogers College of Law
2023 - present - Director, Workers' Rights Clinic
James E. Rogers College of Law
2018 - 2023 - Co-Director, Immigrant Justice Clinic
James E. Rogers College of Law
2019 - 2020 - Attorney, Speaker, Author
Employment Law, Immigration and Asylum Law, Tucson, Arizona
2010 - present - Attorney
Arizona Risk Retention Trust, Tucson, Arizona
2008 - 2009 - Attorney
DeConcini McDonald Yetwin & Lacy PC, Tucson, Arizona
2002 - 2008 - Law Clerk
Hon. Ruth V. McGregor, Arizona Supreme Court, Phoenix, Arizona
2001 - 2002