Emily Seawell

Emily Seawell is a voting rights staff attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a nonpartisan nonprofit law firm in Durham. As a staff attorney, she has been involved in recent litigation challenging voter suppression and redistricting laws in North Carolina and across the South on behalf of clients including the NAACP, League of Women Voters, Common Cause, and A. Philip Randolph Institute. Her office was deeply involved in the recent legal victory in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in North Carolina NAACP v. McCrory, which struck down North Carolina’s voter ID law and restored same-day voter registration, out-of-precinct voting, pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds, and a week of early voting. Her office also represents plaintiffs in Covington v. North Carolina, which struck down 28 state legislative districts as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders and led to court-ordered redistricting in North Carolina in August 2017. Emily received her law degree from Elon University and is originally from Gastonia, North Carolina, which is just west of Charlotte.