Civil Rights Symposium 2026 – Part Two: Examining the Decisions Shaping Civil Rights, Voting Rights, and Access to Justice

Susan Saba Roinick, Esq. is a Nurse Attorney with the law firm Seeger Weiss LLP. She joined Seeger Weiss in 2018. The firm has offices in Old City, Philadelphia, and its flagship office is in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey. Ms. Saba Roinick graduated with a Juris Doctor from Washington and Lee University School of Law in 2006. She also earned her Bachelor of Science in nursing from La Salle University, where she graduated magna cum laude. She practices pharmaceutical drug and medical device products liability. Before joining Seeger Weiss, she was an Assistant Public Defender in Lycoming County. Susan has served as law clerk to The Honorable Nancy L. Butts of the 29th Judicial District and The Honorable Robert C. Daniels of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania. Susan is an active community servant. She sits on the Advisory Committee of the Nurse-Family Partnership of the Guthrie Health System. Her past board experience includes serving as Secretary of Sullivan County Victim Services. She also enjoys doing “Read Alouds” with The Rendell Center. Read Alouds are an opportunity for volunteer attorneys to read and discuss stories via Zoom with elementary school students across the Commonwealth. Susan is an active member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association. She is the immediate Past Chair of the Health Care Law Committee. She is also a member of the Women in the Profession Section, the Civil and Equal Rights Committee, and the Minority Bar Committee. In addition to her private practice, Susan provides pro bono services as a volunteer attorney for Philly VIP and North Penn Legal Services. Originally from Bucks County, PA, Susan now resides in Sullivan County, PA, with her husband, daughter, two cats and a dog. Her family is active in the Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish, Dushore, PA, where Susan has served as First Holy Communion teacher, choir member, and lector. Susan is a 1998 graduate of Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY.

Justin Lam serves as counsel in the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program. Prior to joining the center, he clerked for Judge John P. Howard III of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals and Judge Nina R. Morrison of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. He also worked to advance children’s rights in education and juvenile justice as a public interest fellow at the National Center for Youth Law. Lam earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his master of public policy and law degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Before attending UC Berkeley, Lam was a New York City fifth-grade teacher and managed digital, data, and operations for nearly six years at an education advocacy organization.

Kathryn is Senior Counsel at LDF. Kathryn focuses primarily on LDF’s voting work, including Congressional, state legislative and local redistricting. Kathryn speaks to various national, state, and local non-partisan groups on race, voting and redistricting. Kathryn is counsel in Milligan v. Merrill (Allen v. Milligan)and Robinson v. Ardoin, cases challenging the U.S. Congressional redistricting maps enacted by Alabama and Louisiana following the 2020 Census as violations of the Voting Rights Act and other applicable law. In Milligan, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a three-judge panel’s finding that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act claim and ordered the Alabama legislature to re-draw the state’s U.S. Congressional map to create two districts in which Black voters can elect candidates of their choice. In Robinson, a federal district court and two panels of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their Section 2 claim. Kathryn is lead counsel in McClure v. Jefferson County Commission, a lawsuit challenging the Jefferson County, Alabama Commission districts as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. The lawsuit argues that the Commission violated the 14th Amendment of the Constitution by unnecessarily packing Black voters into two super majority-Black commission districts (with over 75% Black populations). Since joining LDF, Kathryn has also worked in Texas to oppose Senate Bill 7 (later SB1) because of its harmful impact on Black and brown voters, including by burdening their access to ‘Souls to the Polls,’ and criminalizing various aspects of the political process. Kathryn is counsel in Houston Justice v. Abbott, a case challenging Texas SB 1, which continues to burden access to the franchise for Black voters by eliminating means and methods of voting Black voters used disproportionately in the 2020 general election. Prior to joining LDF, Kathryn served as Counsel at Dēmos, where she litigated class action lawsuits in federal district and appellate courts on behalf of grassroots organizations led by Black and brown Americans. Kathryn’s docket at Dēmos included legal challenges to burdensome remote voting requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic, unlawful voter roll purges, state voter registration practices in conflict with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, and the arbitrary disenfranchisement of individuals temporarily detained. Kathryn was previously a law fellow, and was later offered a Staff Attorney position, at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama. At SPLC, she worked on legal challenges to the application of the felony murder doctrine to juveniles and the state’s statutory exclusion of certain juveniles from the juvenile justice system. Kathryn also engaged in extensive policy work centered on reforming Alabama laws that allow children to be charged and tried as adults in the criminal legal system. Kathryn’s work at SPLC included the Center’s Alabama voting rights efforts, including principally drafting an amicus brief on behalf of the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus and grassroots organizations in LDF’s challenge to Alabama’s discriminatory photo ID law. She also formerly served as a legal consultant to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East in Jerusalem and as a Litigation Fellow at LDF. Kathryn also served as co-counsel in a habeas petition on behalf of an individual detained at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Kathryn holds a J.D. from The George Washington University Law School and a B.A. from Tulane University. She is admitted to practice in New York, the District of Columbia and Alabama.

Ms. Roper is Of Counsel with Langer, Grogan & Diver P.C., a Philadelphia boutique litigation firm dedicated to seeking social and economic justice for consumers and small businesses. The firm’s expertise is in class actions and other complex litigation, focused in the areas of antitrust, consumer protection, and civil rights. Ms. Roper joined the firm from the ACLU of Pennsylvania, where she served as Deputy Legal Director. At the ACLU, Mary Catherine led an active docket of state and federal court cases spanning a broad range of civil liberties issues, including freedom of speech, criminal justice reform, government transparency, racial and ethnic justice, LGBT equality, and immigrant rights. She is widely recognized as a preeminent litigation strategist, trial lawyer, and appellate advocate. Before joining the ACLU, Ms. Roper was a partner at Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP (now Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP), where she had a diversified complex litigation practice with extensive experience in class actions, consumer protection, corporate governance, defamation and commercial litigation. She represented individual and corporate clients from a wide range of industries, appearing in state and federal courts across the country, as well as in mass tort and federal court multidistrict proceedings. Prior to joining Drinker Biddle & Reath, Ms. Roper clerked for the Honorable Anita B. Brody of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and served a year with the Disabilities Law Project as the first recipient of the Philadelphia Bar Foundation Public Interest Fellowship. Ms. Roper graduated, cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1993. She earned her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College in 1987. Ms. Roper grew up in Southern California, but now considers herself a Philadelphian and a Phillies fan.

Professor Ravenell joined Villanova Law School in 2006 and began serving as Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development in June of 2019.  She teaches Civil Procedure, Criminal Procedure, Civil Rights Litigation, and Police Conduct. Professor Ravenell’s scholarship focuses on § 1983, the federal civil remedy for constitutional deprivations, and examines the points at which § 1983 jurisprudence converges with other areas of the law. She is an expert on qualified immunity, municipal liability, and federal civil rights litigation against police officials. In 2020 she contributed to the American Constitution Society’s What’s the Big Idea? project, a collection of essays by leading scholars in the legal field recommending policy changes to incoming federal and state administrations. Her scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in Temple Law Review, North Carolina Review, Texas Law Review and other leading journals. Professor Ravenell received her B.A. from the University of Virginia and her J.D. from Columbia University School of Law.  While at Columbia, she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. Following law school, Professor Ravenell was an associate with Wilmer, Cutler, & Pickering in Washington D.C. and clerked for the Honorable Raymond A. Jackson of the United Stated District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia before joining the College of William and Mary law faculty as a Visiting Assistant Professor.

Leonore F. (Lee) Carpenter is an associate professor at Rutgers-Camden School of Law where she teaches Legal Analysis, Writing and Research, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and the Law, Professional Responsibility, Appellate Advocacy, and Introduction to Public Interest Law. Her publications include: Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, and its Effect on Pennsylvania’s LGBTQ Community, 91 Pa. B.A. Q. 103 (2020); One Sequin at a Time: Lessons on State Constitutions and Incremental Change from the Campaign for Marriage Equality, 75 N.Y.U. Ann. Surv. Am. L. 255 (2020) (with E. Margolis); Walking While Trans: Profiling of Transgender Women by Law Enforcement, and the Problem of Proof, 24 Wm. & Mary J. Women & L. 5 (2017) (with B. Marshall); The Next Phase: Positioning the Post-Obergefell LGBT Rights Movement to Bridge the Gap Between Formal and Lived Equality, 13 Stan. J. C.R. & C.L. 255 (2017); and Getting Queer Priorities Straight: How Direct Legal Services Can Democratize Issue Prioritization in the LGBT Rights Movement, 17 U. Penn. J. Law and Social Change 107 (2014). Prior to joining the Rutgers Law School faculty, Professor Carpenter spent 14 years on the faculty at Temple University Beasley School of Law, where she received a University Senate Faculty Service Award. She also previously served as Legal Director at Equality Advocates Pennsylvania, a public interest agency that provided direct legal services, education, and policy reform advocacy for LGBTQ+ Pennsylvanians. In recognition of Professor Carpenter’s civil rights advocacy work, she has been awarded the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Cheryl Ingram Advocate for Justice Award, and was named one of the 2012 40 Best LGBTQ+ Attorneys Under 40. Professor Carpenter is a 2000 graduate of Temple Law, where she received the Beth Cross Award for commitment to underserved populations. Following graduation from law school, Professor Carpenter completed a clerkship with the Honorable Harold B. Wells, III of the New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division.

Currently in private practice, Ms. Shuster was Chief Counsel of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission from 1983-2005. She was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1974 and to the United States Supreme Court in 1978. She served as a Deputy Attorney General, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Office of Civil Litigation, from 1978-83, as an Assistant Attorney General, Pennsylvania Department of Health, 1977-78, and as an Assistant General Counsel, Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, 1974-77. Ms. Shuster has conducted nation-wide training on employment discrimination for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and for numerous legal and business organizations. She has been a course planner and faculty member for several Pennsylvania Bar Institute courses, including the first three CERC CLEs on Election Law, the annual CERC Civil Rights Symposia, Practice Before the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, Whose Constitution Is It, Anyway?, Errant Judges and Lawyers: What to Do? and Civil Rights: To Preserve and Protect, and many discrimination law courses, covering the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, general discrimination law, sexual harassment, age discrimination and discrimination on the basis of disability. Her discrimination law publications include “The Commonwealth Court and the Interpretation of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act,” Widener Law Journal, 2011, and “Service/Support Animals,” Pennsylvania Bar Quarterly, 2006. Ms. Shuster served as the Civil and Equal Rights Committee’s ambassador to the PBA Diversity Team from 2010-2015. She served on the “Paths to Leadership” panel at the 2012 YLD Summer Meeting, as a member of the PBA Task Force on the Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice, and as a member of the “Court as Employer Gender Bias Subcommittee Work Group” of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System. Ms. Shuster received her B.A. from Temple University in 1971 and her J.D. from Villanova School of Law in 1974. She is admitted to the bars of the United States Supreme Court, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, the Middle and Eastern District Courts of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Ms. Shuster is a member of the American Bar Association, the Pennsylvania Bar Association, where she is a member of the Civil and Equal Rights Committee (Chair of the CLE Committee, past Chair & Co-Chair of CERC), Women in the Profession Committee (Member of the Executive Committee, Chair of the Book Club), Minority Bar, Statutory Law, and Immigration Law Committees. She is a Bencher in the James S. Bowman American Inn of Court and a past president of the Harrisburg Area Women Lawyers Association. In November 2023, Ms. Shuster was the first recipient of the PBA Women in the Profession’s Special Achievement Award which recognizes achievements by a female member of the legal profession whose actions and work have promoted the betterment of women in the law and have enhanced services to women in general. She was included in the 2021 Women in the Profession Report Card’s “Profiles of Women Advocating for Social Change.” In 2020, Ms. Shuster was awarded the PBA Civil & Equal Rights Champion Award, an annual award established by the Civil & Equal Rights Committee to honor an individual who champions civil rights for all Pennsylvanians.Currently in private practice, Ms. Shuster was Chief Counsel of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission from 1983-2005. She was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1974 and to the United States Supreme Court in 1978. She served as a Deputy Attorney General, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Office of Civil Litigation, from 1978-83, as an Assistant Attorney General, Pennsylvania Department of Health, 1977-78, and as an Assistant General Counsel, Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, 1974-77. Ms. Shuster has done nation-wide training on employment discrimination for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and for numerous legal and business organizations. She has been a course planner and faculty member for several Pennsylvania Bar Institute courses, including the first three CERC CLEs on Election Law, the annual CERC Civil Rights Symposia, Practice Before the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, Whose Constitution Is It, Anyway?, Errant Judges and Lawyers: What to Do? and Civil Rights: To Preserve and Protect, and many discrimination law courses, covering the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, general discrimination law, sexual harassment, age discrimination and discrimination on the basis of disability. Her discrimination law publications include “The Commonwealth Court and the Interpretation of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act,” Widener Law Journal, 2011, and “Service/Support Animals,” Pennsylvania Bar Quarterly, 2006. Ms. Shuster served as the Civil and Equal Rights Committee’s ambassador to the PBA Diversity Team from 2010-2015. She served on the “Paths to Leadership” panel at the 2012 YLD Summer Meeting, as a member of the PBA Task Force on the Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice, and as a member of the “Court as Employer Gender Bias Subcommittee Work Group” of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System. Ms. Shuster received her B.A. from Temple University in 1971 and her J.D. from Villanova School of Law in 1974. She is admitted to the bars of the United States Supreme Court, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, the Middle and Eastern District Courts of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Ms. Shuster is a member of the American Bar Association, the Pennsylvania Bar Association, where she is a member of the Civil and Equal Rights Committee (Chair of the CLE Committee, past Chair & Co-Chair of CERC), Women in the Profession Committee (Member of the Executive Committee, Chair of the Book Club), Minority Bar, Statutory Law, and Immigration Law Committees. She is a Bencher in the James S. Bowman American Inn of Court and a past president of the Harrisburg Area Women Lawyers Association. In November 2023, Ms. Shuster was the first recipient of the PBA Women in the Profession’s Special Achievement Award which recognizes achievements by a female member of the legal profession whose actions and work have promoted the betterment of women in the law and have enhanced services to women in general. She was included in the 2021 Women in the Profession Report Card’s “Profiles of Women Advocating for Social Change.” In 2020, Ms. Shuster was awarded the PBA Civil & Equal Rights Champion Award, an annual award established by the Civil & Equal Rights Committee to honor an individual who champions civil rights for all Pennsylvanians.

Matt Haverstick is a managing partner at Kleinbard and member of the Firm’s Litigation Department. Widely recognized as one of Pennsylvania’s preeminent litigators, Matt represents government officials, private entities, political parties, and individuals in high-profile litigation and appeals in state and federal court. A leading advocate on matters of state political law, Matt specializes in complex cases involving government officials, pressing issues of public policy, and grand jury practice. He routinely argues before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, where he recently represented the state Republican Senate Caucus in a lawsuit stemming from the impeachment of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, and has argued upwards of 100 matters in Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court. Matt has also prevailed before the Supreme Court of the United States, recovering more than $10 million in unclaimed property funds on behalf of the Pennsylvania Department of Treasury. Referred to in media reports as the “counsel of choice for state Republicans in a number of recent policy fights,” Matt has a strong understanding of local, state, and federal governments, their stakeholders, and the media landscape. His team has represented elected officials at all levels of government in key, and often novel, legal fights – from petition challenges and ballot contests to disputes over redistricting, Medicaid funding and gubernatorial COVID-19 emergency orders. His government clients include several congressmen, the Pennsylvania Senate Republican Caucus, SEPTA, the Pennsylvania Treasurer and candidates for statewide elected office. Outside of the political arena, Matt’s career has been marked by several landmark cases, including the pivotal role he continues to play in the highly publicized and ongoing effort to recognize Pace-O-Matic’s skill games as legal games of skill in Pennsylvania. In 2023, the state Commonwealth Court ruled that Pace-O-Matic’s skill games do not constitute illegal gambling, setting a state-wide precedent and notching a significant legal victory for the skill game industry. Matt is also well-known for representing the Jehovah’s Witnesses in important litigation regarding religious freedoms and the successful representation of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Greensburg, both of which were included in the grand jury report on child sex abuse in Catholic churches. Matt serves as a trusted advisor and counselor to his public- and private-sector clients. An effective communicator both in and out of the courtroom, Matt is comfortable managing media intensive matters and serving as a spokesperson on behalf of his clients. He is a well-known voice in the legal industry, and is regularly featured in local, national, and international press, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, Time, BBC, and more.