Public Interest Monday: Labor Law with Professor Kate Andrias

Kate Andrias

Patricia D. and R. Paul Yetter Professor of Law

Columbia Law School

Kate Andrias teaches and writes in the fields of constitutional law, labor law, and administrative law. Her scholarship probes the failures of U.S. law to protect workers’ rights, examines the efforts of historical and contemporary worker movements to transform legal structures, and analyzes how labor law and constitutional governance might be reformed to enable greater political and economic democracy. Drawing from constitutional law, administrative law, and legal history perspectives, she also has explored the relationship between law and the perpetuation of economic inequality. She frequently provides advice on policy initiatives to legislators and workers’ rights organizations and works on related litigation.

Prior to law school, Andrias worked for several years as an organizer with the Service Employees International Union. After receiving a J.D. from Yale Law School, she clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59 on the U.S. Supreme Court. Andrias practiced political law at Perkins Coie and served as associate counsel and special assistant to President Barack Obama and as chief of staff in the White House Counsel’s Office.

She joined the faculty of Michigan Law School in 2013 and was the recipient of its L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2016. She joined the faculty of Columbia Law School in 2021 and also has served as an academic fellow at Columbia Law School and taught American Constitutional Law as a visiting professor at L'Institut d'Études Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris. Andrias served as a commissioner and the rapporteur for the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court and sits on the Board of Academic Advisors of the American Constitution Society.

Karen Cacace

New York State Office of the Attorney General

Karen Cacace is the labor bureau chief in the New York State Office of the Attorney General, where she oversees the bureau’s civil and criminal enforcement of the labor laws as well as the bureau’s representation of the New York State Department of Labor and Workers’ Compensation Board. Prior to joining the Attorney General's Office, Karen was the director of the Employment Law Unit at the Legal Aid Society. Before that, she was a partner at Vladeck, Waldman, Elias & Engelhard, P.C. in New York, where she represented individuals in employment related matters, focusing on discrimination claims. 

Amos Laor '18 LL.M.

District Council 37

Amos Laor '18 LL.M. is an assistant general counsel at DC37, New York City’s largest public employee union. He previously served as a Columbia Pathways Fellow at the legal department of SEIU Local 32BJ, representing property service employees. Amos has also worked as a labor lawyer and human rights advocate in Israel. 

Sarah Leberstein

32BJ

Sarah Leberstein is the Senior Legislative & Policy Advisor at SEIU Local 32BJ, a union representing over 175,000 janitorial, security, airport, and other property service workers along the east coast. Sarah develops policies to support 32BJ’s new organizing campaigns and bargaining and to further the union’s social justice priorities, across all of the local’s jurisdictions. 

Before joining 32BJ, Sarah was the supervising attorney for the workplace justice legal team at Make the Road New York, where she represented low-wage and immigrant workers in a range of employment matters. She also provided legal support for MRNY’s campaigns, including the fight for NY’s Excluded Workers Fund. Before MRNY, Sarah worked at Fordham Law School’s Stein Center for Ethics and Public Interest Law. She previously worked as a policy advisor at New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection in the Office of Labor Policy and Standards. And she provided technical legal support to unions and worker centers and worked on major policy initiatives at the National Employment Law Project. Her writings and commentary have appeared in major national media, including The New York Times, National Public Radio, US News and World Report. Her publications include Upholding Labor Standards in Home Care: How to Build Employer Accountability into America’s Fastest-Growing Jobs and Rights on Demand: Ensuring Workplace Standards and Worker Security in the On-Demand Economy. Sarah is a graduate of Wesleyan University and Fordham Law School. She was the recipient of an Equal Justice Works fellowship from 2008 to 2010. 

Peter Romer-Friedman '06

Peter Romer-Friedman Law PLLC

Peter Romer-Friedman '06 is a civil rights and public interest litigator. He is a principal and founder of Peter Romer-Friedman Law PLLC and was previously a partner at Gupta Wessler PLLC, a public interest appellate firm, and Outten & Golden LLP, a workers’ rights firm. After graduating from Columbia Law School, Peter clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit and served as labor counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy and the Senate HELP Committee.