By Andrew Cohen
Second-year Berkeley Law students Tracy Tefertiller and Emily Prifogle have won first and second place, respectively, in this year’s Adam A. Milani Disability Law Writing Competition.
Sponsored by Mercer University School of Law, the national competition seeks to promote greater interest in disability law and excellent legal writing skills in law students. Named for the late Milani, a former disability rights activist and renowned scholar, the competition solicits student-written trial or appellate briefs on disability law, theory, or practice.
Tefertiller and Prifogle submitted briefs they wrote last spring in their first-year Written and Oral Advocacy sections, taught by Cheryl Berg ’93 and Erin Clarke. Their winning entries were selected out of roughly 60 entries submitted law students from across the country.
Tefertiller, who will receive a $600 prize, argued that a commercial website is a place of public accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Prifogle, who will receive a $400 prize, argued against this conclusion and for a more narrow reading of the ADA.
The legal issue was based in part on the efforts of Berkeley Law graduate Mazen Basrawi ’04 and his work on a case through a public interest fellowship at Disability Rights Advocates, a non-profit firm dedicated to securing civil rights for people with disabilities.