Katie Raitz

Katie Raitz is from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Prior to law school, she worked in Government Affairs for the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) and was an environmental organizer with the Sunrise Movement and the fossil fuel divestment movement. She joined the UCI Law community because of its emphasis on public interest lawyering and interdisciplinary scholarship and learning experiences. As a student in the UCI Law Environmental Law Clinic, she counseled the Environmental Law Society in the organization’s effort to transition UCI Law from purchasing single-use plastics to a more sustainable consumption policy. She also led the clinic’s participation in the inaugural Climate Justice Pledge Global Day of Action by urging UCI Law students to reduce the time they idle their vehicles and organized an Earth Day event for the campus community. She worked for two years as a research assistant to environmental law Professor Alejandro Camacho. As a pro bono volunteer, she wrote an amicus brief to the New York Court of Appeals on behalf of a New York City elementary school seeking to protect the open space next to its building. As a member of the interdisciplinary Law, Society, and Culture emphasis graduate program, she researched the racialized use of the term “environmental justice” in the legal profession. After graduating, she clerked for the Honorable Shashi H. Kewalramani in the United States District Court for the Central District of California and then joined the Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources practice in WilmerHale’s Denver Office.