Uruj Sheikh (she/her) joins LDF as an Equal Justice Works Fellow sponsored by Latham & Watkins LLP. Her fellowship project aims to combat the coordinated assault on the voting rights of Black voters in the Deep South.
She is a 2022 graduate of the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law. While in law school, Uruj participated in the Defenders Clinic and CLEAR Project (Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility Project). She served as the Editor-in-Chief of CUNY Law Review and the executive board of National Lawyers Guild-CUNY. During law school, Uruj interned with the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, Baltimore Action Legal Team through Law 4 Black Lives, and the Criminal Defense Practice at The Legal Aid Society – Queens, and the Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights as a 2021 Mississippi Project Delegation member. She was a teacher’s assistant for a course on equal protection and substantive due process and a research assistant for Professor Jeena Shah. She was also a recipient of a Sorensen Center Fellowship and a Public Interest fellow. Her article “Reviving the Civic Body: Campaign for Suffrage Inside Prisons, Felony Enfranchisement in D.C., and Lawyering for Abolition” was published in the Footnote Forum section of CUNY Law Review, volume 24, issue 2.
Prior to law school, Uruj lived in Baltimore, MD where she was a development campaign manager at The Real News Network. She was a development associate with Brandworkers and War Resisters League. She received a B.A. in Philosophy at CUNY – Brooklyn College and a certificate in Labor Studies from the Murphy Institute at CUNY.
Uruj is admitted to practice in New York State and the Eastern District of New York.