Alaizah Koorji is Senior Counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, where she works on voting rights, criminal justice and educational equity.
Alaizah leads LDF’s amicus team in André et al. v. Clayton County, Georgia on behalf of Black comedians Eric Andre and Clayton English, who, on their way to board their flights out of the Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, were racially profiled, unlawfully detained in a narrow jet bridge, and interrogated without basis by Clayton County Police Department (CCPD) officers.
As part of her voting rights work, Alaizah is on the litigation team in Sixth District of The African Methodist Episcopal Church v. Kemp, a lawsuit challenging Georgia’s voter suppression laws that are alleged to discriminate against Black voters, voters of color and voters with disabilities. Alaizah also represents Plaintiffs in the landmark Chisom v. State of Louisiana case, which established the first majority minority district in Orleans Parish that allowed Black voters to elect a candidate of their choice to the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Alaizah is a member of LDF’s trial team in Arnold v. Barbers Hill Independent School District, a case challenging a Texas school district’s racially discriminatory hair and grooming policy. She also represents parents of children attending Baltimore City Schools in Bradford v. Maryland State Board of Education, in which Plaintiffs are advocating for increased state funding to provide students a constitutionally adequate education.
Before joining LDF, Alaizah was a public defender at Brooklyn Defender Services in both the criminal defense and immigration defense practices. As part of the New York Family Unity Project (“NYIFUP”), she represented detained non-citizens facing deportation before immigrations courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the Second Circuit. She later joined the criminal practice, representing hundreds of clients in criminal court from arraignment through disposition.
Previously, Alaizah worked as a litigation associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP and Cooley LLP.
Alaizah received her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2014, where she participated in the Prison Legal Assistance Project and the Human Rights Clinic. She earned her B.A. in International Development and Public Health from the University of California Los Angeles in 2011.
