Patricia Okonta

Staff Attorney

In 2025, Patricia Okonta joined Public Justice as a Staff Attorney in the Student Civil Rights’ Project. Prior to joining Public Justice, Patriciasevered as Assistant Counsel at the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) where she worked on a variety of racial justice cases across the country, including challenging South Carolina Department of Education’s attempts to censor curriculum and erode the quality of public education; discriminatory dress and grooming codes in schools; and the constitutionality of California’s capital punishment scheme. Previously, she served as a law clerk for Chief Judge Margo K. Brodie of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York and the Honorable Jane B. Stranch in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She also completed a Skadden Fellowship at LDF, where she successfully compelled an Atlanta-based housing provider to eliminate a restrictive screening policy that automatically denied tenant applications from individuals with prior convictions and served as counsel in a 2020 order from the Southern District of Texas enjoining a public school district from enforcing a dress and grooming code against a student that wore culturally significant locs. In addition, Patricia represented an individual on federal death row seeking Section 2255 relief, victims of prison neglect during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals formerly sentenced as juveniles seeking parole in Mississippi, and families seeking educational equity in Florida.

Patricia received her J.D. from Columbia Law School, as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and Cambell Award Recipient, and served as Executive Editor of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review and former staffer of the Jailhouse Lawyers Manual. She received her B.A., with distinction, from Yale University.