Alexandra Santa Ana is a staff attorney at the Equal Justice Society (EJS), a national civil rights legal organization working to fully restore the constitutional protections of the Fourteenth Amendment. EJS focuses on expanding the understanding of present-day discrimination to include unconscious and structural bias, and targets legal advocacy efforts on school discipline, special education, the school-to-prison pipeline, race-conscious remedies, and inequities in the criminal justice system. The Oakland, California-based nonprofit also engages the arts and artists in creating work and performances that allow wider audiences to understand social justice issues and struggles.
Alexandra Santa Ana
Fearless Children's Lawyer of the Month | January 2022
Alexandra currently works on impact litigation to disrupt the school to prison pipeline, working directly on behalf of Black and Brown youth harmed by racially discriminatory structures and practices. Her recent work includes a case filed against the California Department of Education on behalf of Black and Latinx students and families seeking to have the state monitor and address school districts with racially disproportionate school disicipline and push-out rates.
Alexandra was inspired to discover she could work to impact social change as a lawyer. Having seen the impact of unfair and harmful school discipline growing up, Alexandra’s own experience informs and drives her work. “These cases are difficult, but when you have seen it firsthand, you really have no choice but to embrace the challenge if you want to change the system.” Alexandra views her role as a youth attorney as lifting up the voices of young people. “We need to take time to listen to youth because they know more than anyone what it is they need.”
Before joining EJS in March 2021, Alexandra was a Youth Justice Staff Attorney at Bay Area Legal Aid, where she provided direct legal representation to young people experiencing homelessness, survivors of human trafficking, and youth involved in the dependency and delinquency systems. Before Bay Area Legal Aid, Alexandra was a Public Service Venture Fund Fellow at the National Center for Youth Law. Alexandra earned her J.D. at Harvard Law School and her B.A. in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.
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