Kathryn Sadasivan

Kathryn joined LDF as a Redistricting Counsel in February 2021. Kathryn focuses on LDF’s Congressional, state legislative and local redistricting. Kathryn speaks to various national, state, and local non-partisan groups on race and redistricting. Since joining LDF, Kathryn also has worked in Texas to oppose Senate Bill 7 because of its harmful impact on Black and brown voters, including by burdening their access to ‘Souls to the Polls,’ and criminalizing various aspects of the political process.

Prior to joining LDF, Kathryn served as Counsel at Dēmos, where she litigated class action lawsuits in federal district and appellate courts on behalf of grassroots organizations led by Black and brown Americans. Kathryn’s docket at Dēmos included legal challenges to burdensome remote voting requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic, unlawful voter roll purges, state voter registration practices in conflict with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, and the arbitrary disenfranchisement of individuals temporarily detained. Kathryn was previously a law fellow, and was later offered a Staff Attorney position, at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama. At SPLC, she worked on legal challenges to the application of the felony murder doctrine to juveniles and the state’s statutory exclusion of certain juveniles from the juvenile justice system. Kathryn also engaged in extensive policy work centered on reforming Alabama laws that allow children to be charged and tried as adults in the criminal legal system. Kathryn’s work at SPLC included the Center’s Alabama voting rights efforts, including principally drafting an amicus brief on behalf of the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus and grassroots organizations in LDF’s challenge to Alabama’s discriminatory photo ID law. She also formerly served as a legal consultant to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East in Jerusalem and as a Litigation Fellow at LDF. Kathryn also served as co-counsel in a habeas petition on behalf of an individual detained at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Kathryn holds a J.D. from The George Washington University Law School and a B.A. from Tulane University. She is admitted to practice in New York, the District of Columbia and Alabama. 

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