Education Rights Director for Public Counsel Law Center
Plenary Presenter: State and Local Action: Reforming School-Justice Policies
Breakout Session Presenter: Working with Advocates to Effect Change
Laura Faer is the statewide Education Rights Director for Public Counsel Law Center. Mrs. Faer has focused her practice on education, children’s rights, and civil rights law. She has served as lead counsel on a number of education rights cases. She successfully represented four foster siblings who were unlawfully segregated from the public school setting, helped defend against a constitutional challenge to Los Unified School District’s voluntary integration program, challenged the practice of involuntarily removing and transferring students, and also worked extensively on the statewide education reform case, Williams v. State of California. In 2011, she was named a California Lawyer Attorney of the Year after she helped secure a landmark settlement in Casey A. v. Gundry, a class action alleging that youth detained at the largest complex of probation camps in the nation were denied a constitutionally adequate education. Prior to taking her current position, Mrs. Faer was the Directing Attorney of the Public Counsel’s Children’s Rights Project.
As a Skadden Law Fellow, Mrs. Faer worked to improve education outcomes and educational quality for low-income children in some of South Los Angeles’ lowest performing schools. She ran a community-based education law clinic and successfully advocated for state legislative and regulatory changes related to California’s implementing statutes for the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Improvement Act of 2004. Mrs. Faer clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and has been consistently named a Rising Star by California Lawyer magazine since 2008.