Sarah E. Ricks graduated from Yale Law School, where she co-founded the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism. She graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College, Columbia University, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. After clerking for the Hon. Thomas N. O’Neill, Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1990-92, she joined Pepper Hamilton in Philadelphia as a litigation associate.
From 1995 to 2001, she was an appellate and legislative attorney for the City of Philadelphia Law Department. She litigated dozens of federal and state appeals, including arguments before the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court.
She teaches Civil Rights Litigation at Rutgers Law every year. In Spring 2013, she taught Civil Rights Litigation at University of Pennsylvania Law School, while on a one-year visit.
Since 2012, she has co-chaired the Section 1983 Subcommittee of the American Bar Association Civil Rights Committee and contributed to the ABA Civil Rights blog.
In 2009, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter appointed Ricks a Commissioner on the Philadelphia Commission for Human Relations, which enforces the City’s antidiscrimination laws in employment, public accommodations, housing, and delivery of city services. In 2009, Ricks was elected to the American Law Institute. Ricks was a Board Member of the Women’s Law Project from 2005 – 2013.
She can be reached at sricks@camden.rutgers.edu
Evelyn Tenenbaum, currently a professor at Albany Law School, is a graduate of Northwestern University and Cornell Law School. She served in the Attorney General’s office as a Section Chief and Assistant Solicitor General and was also a consultant to the New York State Department of Health. She is currently an adjunct professor of medical education at Albany Medical College.
Prof. Tenenbaum has extensive experience handling and supervising healthcare litigation. She has successfully handled dozens of cases in the federal and state courts, both at the trial level and on appeal. Her high- profile health policy cases cover areas including mandatory testing for AIDS, guidelines for office-based surgery, state sick-leave policies, the constitutionality of closing bathhouses, and reproductive policies at Catholic hospitals. She was the lead attorney in a class action involving the Social Security Administration’s over-reliance on the treadmill exercise test and won class-wide relief entitling class members to disability benefits totaling more than $65 million and saving New York’s state and local governments approximately $11 million per year.
Prof. Tenenbaum has also handled and supervised dozens of civil rights cases. Her high-profile civil rights cases include a landmark decision upholding the constitutionality of applying the State Labor Relations Act to lay teachers at Catholic Schools. She currently teaches Lawyering and Public Health Policy and serves as faculty advisor to the Domenick L. Gabrielli National Family Moot Court Competition.
She can be reached at etene@albanylaw.edu