Courtney Chenette is a civil rights attorney and assistant professor of political science and gender and women’s studies at Hollins. She also serves the community as a pre-law advisor.
After studying at Hollins, Chenette earned her J.D. and practiced law in New York City. She began her legal advocacy as a New York University Revson LSPIN Fellow, representing and empowering teenage dating and domestic violence survivors. As a civil rights attorney, she litigated, trained, and counseled clients on novel constitutional questions involving government power and administration, voting, policing, education, employment, and discrimination. She regularly lectured for the New York Municipal Insurance Reciprocal. Most recently, she was appointed an attorney ballot monitor in the Wisconsin 2020 presidential election recount, and Georgia’s 2021 Senate runoff. Chenette is general counsel to New York City nonprofit Reconstructing Hope and remains a member of the bar in New York and New Jersey.
Courses Taught
Constitutional Law
Race, Class, Gender & The Law
Election Law & Voting Rights
Law & Politics of Work
Presidential Power
Supreme! America’s Highest Court
Religious Liberty
Social Justice Minor Capstone
Education
J.D., The Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University
B.A., Hollins University
Accomplishments
In 2020, Chenette traveled to Qatar as a faculty Fellow with the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations. She brought the National Council’s first regional Arab Court of Justice mock trial simulation to the Appalachian Regional Model Arab League Conference at Hollins University in 2020.
Prior to joining the Hollins faculty, Chenette was an associate attorney, in civil rights, class action, and municipal litigation boutique practice, at New York City firms Morris Duffy Alonso & Faley (2015-2018) and Newman Ferrara LLP (2011-2015). She continues to volunteer her expertise to numerous legal organizations; including, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law’s nonpartisan Election Protection coalition, The New York League of Women Voters, and The Virginia Equality Bar Association.
In 2017, she was an honoree and speaker, recognized by the New York Civil Liberties Union, Lower Hudson Valley, as responding federal counsel to the John F. Kennedy Airport preparing habeas corpus petitions overnight, responsive to Executive Order 13769.
