Maya Hiebert ’24 and Malik Jarvis ’24 have been selected as 2024 Skadden Fellows. Established by the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in 1988, the prestigious two-year fellowship provides funding, mentorship, and networking opportunities to recent graduates working in the public interest. After proposing a project to meet some of the civil legal needs of clients living in poverty, recipients work with a host organization to carry out their planned work.
For her fellowship, Maya Hiebert ’24 will work with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey on behalf of New Jersey parents in the child welfare system. In particular, Hiebert will be working on matters concerning the Child Abuse Record Information (CARI) registry. Hiebert says that when a parent’s name is entered into CARI, following a finding of neglect or abuse by Child Protective Services (CPS), that person is on the registry for life, barring a successful appeal during a very short window. Being listed in the registry impacts a parent’s ability to get certain jobs—for example, in childcare or education—among other negative effects. Hiebert will represent parents in appeals and also work on strategic litigation efforts and policy advocacy to increase opportunities to expunge names from the registry.
“Besides a CPS investigation being incredibly traumatic for parents and children, the results of these investigations have lasting consequences on parents who already experience a severe lack of due process throughout the investigatory process,” says Hiebert. “My project will allow me to work on issues that are underemphasized yet so harmful for parents and families in New Jersey. It will hopefully move at least this one issue in the right direction.”
For his project, Jarvis will work at the Boston-based Project on Predatory Student Lending, which uses policy advocacy, outreach, and litigation to defend borrowers’ rights. His project focuses on aiding low-income recipients of Parent PLUS loans—a type of student loan that allows parents to borrow for their children—with a particular focus on Black families. “There’s research that shows that low-income families are increasingly burdened by these loans, taking on unsustainable debts and then having very limited options for relief,” says Jarvis. His work will include representing individual families in administrative efforts to obtain relief while also pursuing systemic solutions to predatory lending through litigation and policy advocacy.
“There is an interesting racial justice overlay on top of economic justice issues in terms of who depends on lending to finance education,” says Jarvis. “I see this project as a great way to examine these issues, because these student loans put so many limitations on people’s ability to make major life decisions and build wealth,” he says.
Posted December 6, 2023.