MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A West Virginia University College of Law student is working in Pittsburgh this summer helping defend and advance the rights of women, girls and LGBTQ+ people in Pennsylvania and beyond.
Aliah Hasan, a rising 3L, is a legal intern at the Women's Law Project as a recipient of a Peggy Browning Fellowship. The highly competitive national fellowship provides law students with unique, diverse and challenging work experiences fighting for social and economic justice.
Peggy Browning Fellows are distinguished students who excel in law school and have demonstrated a commitment to workers’ rights through their previous educational, work, volunteer and personal experiences. This year, the fellowship received almost 700 applications for about 80 positions nationwide.
Hasan grew up watching her mother work multiple low-wage retail jobs with little time to think about “justice.” As a child of immigrants, Hasan aspires to use her law degree to aid marginalized people in understanding and exercising their rights. Before law school, Hasan worked at the International Institute of Buffalo, where she advocated for foreign-born survivors of domestic violence and forced labor.
Hasan became more interested in the labor movement as a WVU Law after learning about the state’s unique labor history and the early 20th-century mine wars. She currently serves as a Board Member for the ACLU of West Virginia and is passionate about creating equal opportunities for all. She is also actively involved in campus-wide diversity and inclusion efforts.
Based in Philadelphia, the Peggy Browning Fund is a not-for-profit organization established in memory of Margaret A. Browning, a prominent union-side attorney who was a member of the National Labor Relations Board from 1994 until 1997.
Founded in 1974, the Women’s Law Project is a nonprofit public interest legal organization that leverages impact litigation, policy advocacy, public education, and direct assistance and representation to dismantle discriminatory laws, policies, and practices and eradicate institutional biases and unfair treatment based on sex or gender.
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