eople gathered with signs for 2021 People’s Earth Day Rally at San Francisco City Hall. Credit: Leon Kunstenaar, ProBonoPhoto.org
This winter quarter, Environmental Studies and Sciences faculty member and SCU Law alumnus Zsea Bowmani JD ’14 will lead a multidisciplinary team of undergraduate and law students in community-engaged legal research and advocacy as part of a new law project within SCU’s Environmental Justice & the Common Good Initiative.
Through this Environmental Justice Law and Advocacy Lab, Zsea will work closely with students and in partnership with Bay Area community groups to develop a resource guide to help advocates use California’s civil rights laws to fight environmental discrimination. Zsea will also continue important investigative work begun last year on the environmental impacts of an animal rendering facility in the low income community of Bayview Hunters Point, San Francisco.
Zsea teaches ENVS 120: Introduction to Environmental Law and Regulations in the U.S. and co-leads the Environmental Justice & the Common Good Initiative’s Law and Advocacy Project. In addition to his work at SCU, Zsea is a civil rights attorney and legal scholar that has written broadly on the intersections of environment, race, gender, sexual orientation, human rights, and the law. His current research includes a forthcoming book chapter with UC Press on community-engaged research for environmental justice, and a recent article in the Tulane Journal of Law and Sexuality on integrating Black queer feminist ecology into environmental law and policy.
Prior to joining ESS, Zsea worked on civil and cultural rights at the ACLU, UNESCO Cambodia, and other NGOs. He also briefly returned to SCU to serve as interim Program Manager of the Center for Global Law & Policy at the Law School. Zsea is also active within the local environmental justice movement through the National Lawyers Guild SF chapter’s Environmental Justice Committee, which he established last year, and as a board member of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice. Zsea received his BA in History from Stanford University and his JD from Santa Clara Law with certificates in Public International Law (honors) and Public Interest and Social Justice Law.
