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Columbia Law Profiles Alumna Kamilah Moore, Chair Of California Reparations Task Force

Columbia Law Profiles Alumna Kamilah Moore, Chair Of California Reparations Task Force

Kamilah Moore

Photo: Kamilah Moore, chairwoman of the California reparations task force committee. Courtesy of https://oag.ca.gov/ab3121/members/bios

Columbia Law School highlighted one of its own when it profiled alumna Kamilah Moore, an attorney who serves as chairwoman of California’s Reparations Task Force. A 2019 graduate, Moore said she was “proud” of the recognition from her alma mater.

“Today: I am proud to be featured on the homepage of my alma mater, @ColumbiaLaw! Check out the featured article, that chronicles my story from law student to task force Chairperson below,” Moore tweeted on Tuesday, April 26, along with a link to the article in a law school news publication.

In the piece, Moore discussed how she joined California’s historic, first-in-the-nation reparations task force and became its chairwoman. She also explained how her Columbia law education prepared her for the role.

“I was working in entertainment law in Los Angeles when I heard about California’s Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans. Given my background in reparatory justice [redress for a wrong inflicted] and human rights, I applied,” Moore said.

Moore leveraged her coursework in international criminal law when she realized that the bill signed into law by California Gov. Gavin Newsom stated that any recommendations needed to be in accord with international human rights law standards.

“As a student at Columbia, I participated in the [Smith Family] Human Rights Clinic and domestic and international human rights work,” Moore said. “I contributed to two human rights reports—one on women’s rights in Papua New Guinea and the other on the human right to sanitation in Lowndes County, Alabama, and other areas in the United States.”

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Deciding whether the reparations proposals should be lineage-based or not was one of the biggest issues facing the task force, Moore said. A narrow 5-4 majority, of which Moore was a part, voted pro-lineage on March 29. Her studies at Columbia factored into her decision, she said.

“As someone who has studied human rights law and international law, particularly under the scope of reparatory justice, I know that reparatory justice efforts are supposed to be victim-led,” Moore said. “And so I extrapolated my experience when I was deciding how to vote.”

Moore also discussed how she became interested in law and the next steps for the task force. As one who currently specializes in entertainment law, Moore said her work on the task force made her to want to keep working at both of her passions.

“I am still very much interested in entertainment, IP, and transactional work. But at the same time, I’m very interested in the work I’m doing with reparatory justice, and I’d be open to helping other states and entities do something similar to what we’re doing here in California,” Moore said.

Twitter users congratulated Kamilah Moore for the feature story, with many saying it was well-deserved.

https://twitter.com/civilizedrights/status/1519166113069907969
https://twitter.com/blkunicornrose/status/1519112021236543488

Photo: Kamilah Moore, chairwoman of the California reparations task force committee. Courtesy of https://oag.ca.gov/ab3121/members/bios