Three law students receive LGBTQ public interest law scholarships from the ABA

The American Bar Association Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity has awarded three law students LGBTQ Public Interest scholarships of $5,000 each. Now in its fourth year, the scholarship program is aimed at law students and/or law school graduates studying for the bar who are either LGBTQ or who will be doing public interest work in the LGBTQ space.
The scholarship provides financial support to work in the public interest arena for the summer/fall of 2022.

The recipients are:

• Chanel Chawalit is a second-year student at the University of California, Davis School of Law with a passion for public interest, immigration and criminal law. As a queer Asian American, Chawalit is deeply invested in expanding justice to marginalized queer and Asian communities and is currently a summer intern at Oasis Legal Services in Berkeley, California, a nonprofit that provides asylum and immigration services to LGBTQ+ immigrants. She plans to continue her work with the Asian Pacific American Law Student Association and in public interest law in the upcoming year.

• Harry Chiu is a recent graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was an active member of Lambda, mentoring numerous students to pursue public interest careers. During his first summer of law school, he worked for GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders in Boston, where he contributed research to an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. Last year, Chiu participated in Harvard’s Education Law and Legislative Advocacy Clinic and advocated for special needs, Latinx and LGBTQ+ youth at the Learning Rights Law Center. After graduation, he will begin a two-year fellowship as the inaugural Lynn Walker Huntley Social Justice Fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Southern Education Foundation in Atlanta.  

• Clementine Stormes is a third-year law student at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law, and managing articles editor of the CUNY Law Review, one of the nation’s leading public interest law publications. This summer, she is an intern with the Chosen Family Law Center in New York, a nonprofit that provides pro bono legal services and policy advocacy for LGBTQIA+ and non-nuclear families. Previously, Stormes served as an intern for Judge Lourdes Ventura in Queens County Civil Court in New York and for Judge Bryanne Hamill, chair of the New York State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, helping research and draft a report on anti-Black racial discrimination in eviction policy.