Katie Eyer is an anti-discrimination law scholar, teacher and litigator. She is a leading expert on LGBTQ employment rights and on social movements and constitutional change. Her 2019 article, Statutory Originalism and LGBT Rights, has been credited with originating the textualist argument that the Supreme Court adopted in the landmark case of Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. __ (2020) (holding that anti-LGBT discrimination is discrimination "because of...sex" under Title VII).
Professor Eyer is a member of the American Law Institute and has been recognized at the national, university and local level for her scholarship, teaching, service, and work as a litigator. Her work has been published in numerous top law journals, including the Yale Law Journal, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, and many others.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Professor Eyer was a lawyer doing cutting-edge work in the area of LGBTQ employment rights. In 2005, she founded the Employment Rights Projct at Equality Advocates Pennsylvania, one of the first projects in the country to focus on the employment rights of LGBTQ workers. Professor Eyer later joined the private firm of Salmanson Goldshaw, PC, where she continued to represent LGBTQ clients, as well as litigate race, sex, disability, and other discrimination and ERISA claims. Professor Eyer's work resulted in several precedent-setting decisions expanding the rights of LGBTQ and disabled employees, including one of the first appellate decisions in the country allowing a gay plaintiff's Title VII claims to go to trial.
Professor Eyer clerked for the Hon. Guido Calabresi in 2004-2005, and was a Research Scholar and Lecturer in Law at the University of Pennsylvania from 2009-2012.