Justine Schneeweis

2014 Public Interest Grant Recipient

Ms. Schneeweis is entering her third year at Loyola Law School this fall.  Ms. Schneeweis has found the ability to effectively combine her well-established commitment to women and children rights and her growing dedication to the rights of immigrants.  During college, Ms. Schneeweis organized many campus and community events concerning a myriad of issues affecting women, i.e., sexual violence, reproductive rights, and LGBT rights.  In 2009 and 2011, she attended NGO delegations to Guatemala and Columbia to research femicide and human rights abuses.  After college, Ms. Schneeweis volunteered as a crisis intervention counselor-advocate at Peace Over Violence, where she staffed the LA Rape and Battery Hotline.  Ms. Schneeweis’ pre-law school volunteer efforts did not go unnoticed at Loyola Law School, which awarded her one of the highly competitive merit-based public interest scholarships upon entry.  During law school, Ms. Schneeweis has volunteered for the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project, where she handled a displaced Iraqi woman’s resettlement case, and also the Youth Program at Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, where she helped provide legal services to detained immigrant children in removal proceedings.  More recently, Ms. Schneeweis began working for the Home Base Immigration Clinic where she is responsible for handling an asylum case for a young woman from Mexico and a U-Visa case for a domestic violence survivor.  This summer, Ms. Schneeweis will be working with the ACLU Immigrant Rights Project.