Janell Byrd joined Mehri & Skalet, PLLC, as a partner in February of 2010. She has over 25 years of legal experience advocating on behalf those whose civil rights have been violated or who are disadvantaged by virtue of their status in society. Her work includes litigation, legislative and administrative policy, teaching, and research. She has experience on a wide range of civil rights issues, including educational opportunity, affirmative action, employment discrimination, public accommodations, housing, police misconduct, environmental justice, and medical abuse and neglect.

Ms. Byrd was an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) from 1987 until 2001. She managed LDF’s D.C. office in the late 1990’s and litigated a large number of school desegregation and affirmative action cases, including an appeal of the decision striking the affirmative action admissions program at the University of Georgia, the challenge to the minority scholarship program at the University of Maryland, and the challenge to the affirmative action admissions program at the University of Texas School of Law. Her work on high-stakes testing was instrumental in the adoption of policy guidance by the U.S. Department of Education on the applicability of the civil rights laws to the use of tests in educational settings. 

Starting in 2002, Ms. Byrd practiced with The Cochran Firm in Washington, D.C., where she handled jury trials involving police misconduct and medical abuse and neglect. She also handled employment discrimination and public accommodations cases, including same-sex sexual harassment cases and cases involving the denial of service on the basis of race.  Ms. Byrd served as Chair of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Task Force on Civil Rights Restoration from 2001 to 2004, where she coordinated the efforts of race, national origin, gender, age, disability and labor groups in working with members of Congress to develop a comprehensive analysis and response to the rollback of civil rights laws by the federal courts. This effort resulted in legislation introduced by Senator Ted Kennedy and Congressman John Lewis to restore numerous civil rights laws. In 2003, she was lead counsel for Howard University in the preparation of an amicus brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in two cases involving challenges to the affirmative action admission policies at the University of Michigan.

Ms. Byrd is a 1983 graduate of Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was an Associate Editor of the California Law Review.  She clerked for the Honorable Cecil F. Poole on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and practiced for several years in the mid-1980’s with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, D.C.  

Ms. Byrd was a Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland School of Law in 1995-96, and held the Tobias Simon Eminent Scholar Chair in Public Law at Florida State University School of Law in the spring of 1993.  She held the Charles Hamilton Houston Endowed Chair in Civil Rights Law at North Carolina Central University School of Law from 2006-2009. She is the author of a manuscript on the role of the federal government in residential segregation and has published articles on the federal courts’ restrictions on civil rights laws, high-stakes educational testing, racial discrimination in higher education, and public employee accountability.

Ms. Byrd has made many appearances on national television news and radio programs and frequently has been a presenter at national legal conferences.

E-mail: jbyrd@findjustice.com