Shefali Milczarek-Desai

Shefali Milczarek-Desai (@Shefalimdesai) is Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Director of the Workers’ Rights Clinic, 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 a Sustainable Economies Law Center Fellow. 

Professor Desai instructs the next generation of attorneys in client-centered and cross-cultural lawyering through representation of low-wage immigrant and migrant workers throughout Arizona’s borderlands. Under her supervision, law students have 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 immigrant 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 immigrants including for the American Public Health Association, the State Bar of Arizona, the Arizona Women Lawyer’s Association, and the College of Law. 

Professor Desai writes at the intersection of employment/labor law, immigration law, critical legal theories, and movement law theory. Her current research focuses on how paid sick time laws and policies influence the legal rights and well-being of immigrant workers in essential industries, racial justice for immigrant women nursing home aides working in long-term care, and working alongside migrant workers who want to reclaim their labor through worker-owned cooperatives.  

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 is a 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 in the mountains, preparing Indian food, and reading to her sons. 

Curriculum Vitae

SSRN Published Papers

Representative Publications

• Opening the Pandemic Portal to Re-Imagine Paid Sick Leave for Immigrant Workers, 111 Calif. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2023) 
• 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

• Director, Workers' Rights Clinic
  James E. Rogers College of Law
  2018 - Present
• 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