Stacy Seicshnaydre
William K. Christovich Professor of Law and Robert A. Ainsworth Professor in the Courts and the Federal System
Biography
Stacy Seicshnaydre is a leading authority on fair housing and anti-discrimination law, and her research and writing on housing law and policy have been influential in federal civil rights litigation.
From 2016 to 2021, she served as Associate Dean for Experiential Learning and Public Interest Programs. In that role, Prof. Seicshnaydre oversaw the full range of skills training, experiential, and public interest initiatives at Tulane Law School, including Clinics, Trial Advocacy and moot court, externships, Intersession skills boot camps, and Tulane’s pioneering pro bono program.
As director of Tulane Law School’s Civil Litigation Clinic from 2004 to 2016, she guided students in the representation of clients on a variety of civil rights cases in federal courts at the district and appellate levels. She was also founding executive director and later general counsel of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center.
Seicshnaydre clerked for Judge W. Eugene Davis of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals then was the first Tulane Law graduate to receive a Skadden Fellowship, through which she worked as a staff attorney for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, D.C.
She has served on the board of the Inclusive Communities Project and National Fair Housing Alliance and on the Louisiana Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy cited her work in the landmark disparate impact case of Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project.
Contributions
Selected Publications
Using Legal Tools to Bring Debt and Equity into Balance, A Symposium on Destin Jenkins’s The Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City (October 7, 2021).
Breaking the Silence of the Wolves: An Approach to Teaching Antiracist Lawyering in the Twenty-First Century, 23 Rutgers Race & The Law Review 211 (2021) (with Robert Westley).
Rigging the Real Estate Market: Segregation, Inequality, and Disaster Risk (with Robert A. Collins, Cashauna Hill, and Maxwell Ciardullo), paper in The Data Center New Orleans Tricentennial Prosperity Index series, 2018.
The Legacy and the Promise of Disparate Impact, in The Fight for Fair Housing: Causes, Consequences, and future Implications of the 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act, (Gregory D. Squires ed., 2018) (with Morgan Williams).
Disparate Impact and the Limits of Local Discretion after Inclusive Communities, 24 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 663 (2017), reprinted in Zoning and Planning Law Handbook, 2018 ed., Part 5, Ch. 10 (Clark Boardman Callaghan).
Missed Opportunity: Furthering Fair Housing in the Housing Choice Voucher Program, 79 Law and Contemporary Problems 173 (2016).
Expanding Choice and Opportunity in the Housing Choice Voucher Program, in The Data Center, New Orleans Index at Ten, July 2015, available at https://s3.amazonaws.com/gnocdc/reports/The+Data+Center-Expanding+Housing+Choice+in+New+Orleans.pdf
Is Disparate Impact Having Any Impact? An Appellate Analysis of Forty Years of Disparate Impact Claims Under the Fair Housing Act, 63 American U. L. Rev. 357 (2013), available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2336266.
The Fair Housing Choice Myth, 33 Cardozo L. Rev. 967 (2012), available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2376303, reprinted in 23 J. Affordable Hous. & Comm’y Dev. Law 149 (2015).
How Government Housing Perpetuates Racial Segregation: Lessons from Post-Katrina New Orleans, 60 Cath. U. L. Rev. 661 (2011), available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1947107.
Is the Road to Disparate Impact Paved with Good Intentions? – Stuck on State of Mind in Antidiscrimination Law, 42 WAKE FOREST LAW REV. 1141 (2007).
The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: In Search of a Just Public Housing Policy Post-Katrina, 81 TUL. L. REV. 1263 (2007), reprinted in relevant part POVERTY & RACE, September/October 2007, at 3.
Book Reviews
Facing Segregation: Lighting the Way to a Stronger Democracy, 28 J. Aff. Housing 59 (2019).
General Publications
The Fair Housing Choice Myth: A Post-Script, 23 J. Affordable Hous. & Comm’y Dev. Law 205 (2015).
Huffington Post, “Fair Housing Means Integration,” April 15, 2015, available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacy-seicshnaydre/fair-housing-means-integr_b_7050494.html.
The National Constitution Center Blog, Constitutional Daily, “Disparate impact liability under the Fair Housing Act: Inclusion is not a zero-sum game” January 21, 2015.
The National Constitution Center Blog, Constitutional Daily, “Will Disparate Impact Survive?” November 21, 2013.
“Creating an Affordable and Inclusive Community,” Chapter 1 of the Report to Mayor Nagin’s Bring New Orleans Back Commission, submitted by Members of From the Lake to the River, the New Orleans Coalition for Legal Aid and Disaster Relief (November 2005).
