Ariela Migdal

Ariela Migdal conducts large impact litigation on behalf of state governments, Fortune 500 companies, coalitions, and individuals.  Ms. Migdal handles all stages of litigation and appeal, and has an extensive background designing, investigating, and developing litigation and advocacy initiatives. 

Ms. Migdal has a diverse practice, with experience in consumer and environmental litigation, as well as patent litigation.  She represents the state of Florida in an action in state court against pharmaceutical companies for their role in the opioid crisis, and she has successfully represented the state of New Hampshire in defending a multimillion dollar groundwater pollution judgment.  She has represented leading, high-tech companies in matters to promote innovation and competition, and she serves as amicus counsel for the High Tech Inventors Alliance and the Internet Association. 

Ms. Migdal also has experience handling high-stakes, sensitive matters on behalf of individual clients.  She is lead counsel on a pro bono matter representing an unaccompanied minor seeking relief from deportation proceedings.  She also has represented individuals in litigation involving high-profile and complex family trusts and private businesses.

Before joining Kellogg Hansen as Of Counsel, Ms. Migdal litigated civil rights and women’s rights cases as a senior attorney at the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union.  In that role, she represented four military servicewomen in a successful constitutional challenge to the Pentagon’s rule barring women from serving in ground combat units, litigated cases challenging pregnancy discrimination and other workplace discrimination, and brought cases on behalf of public housing residents subject to discriminatory policies.  She also led complex multi-party cases involving women working in non-traditional occupations and migrant workers, including a case in which she argued before the Second Circuit on behalf of a group of custodians in a case concerning discrimination on the basis of sex and race in the New York City public schools, leading to a successful resolution for her clients.  Other cases involved the rights of students under Title IX and other constitutional and statutory civil rights cases in state and federal courts and administrative agencies around the country. 

Ms. Migdal served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer in 2003-2004 and to Judge Harry T. Edwards of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  She also worked as a law clerk at the Nazareth Public Defender’s Office in Israel.

Publications

Note, RCRA in the Workplace: Using Environmental Law to Combat Dangerous Conditions in Sweatshops, 75 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 6.  Winner of the Rubin prize for best note on public, commercial, or international law.