Sophia Jayanty serves as counsel in the Fair Housing and Community Development Project of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under Law where she practices federal impact litigation related to enforcing the Fair Housing Act's goal to achieve housing free from discrimination in courts across the country. Sophia’s interest in racial justice and civil rights goes back to her early organizing work in the immigrant justice space starting in 2008 and she has continued her commitment to serve as a zealous advocate and attorney in the racial justice legal space for more than decade. Before joining the Lawyers' Committee, Sophia worked as an associate attorney at Earthjustice in New York City, in the organization’s Northeast Division primarily focusing on state and federal environmental justice litigation. There, she and her colleagues successfully litigated a TSCA suit that compelled EPA to update its federal lead hazard standards for housing. Before then, Sophia defended indigent tenants with HIV in New York City’s housing courts to preserve and protect affordable housing opportunities for individuals with disabilities. Upon graduation she began her time as an attorney by serving as a Social Justice Fellow for the City of New York within the Office of the Public Advocate under current New York State Attorney General, Letitia James. During her fellowship, she was able to take her pre-law experiences as a civil legal advocate in the Civil Practice of the Bronx Defenders, a national leader in holistic public defense, and use those insights to pursue municipal investigations into the public housing authority's falsification of apartment repair records, city-owned shelters use of abusive shelter transfer policies, and the criminal courts' administrative failures to effectively seal criminal records.
Sophia is a graduate of Tulane University School of Law where she graduated cum laude and was awarded the Max Nathan Public Interest Award in recognition of her contributions to public interest law.