'Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice in Post-Dobbs Ohio'

Denison University’s Laura C. Harris Series welcomes Professor of Law, Case Western University Jessie Hill, Executive Director, Equality Ohio Alana Jochum and Executive Director, ACLU of Washington Michele Storms, three legal scholars and advocates who will discuss reproductive health legislation, advocacy, and rights in a post-Dobbs landscape in a virtual panel. 

Hill, JD, is associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development and Judge Ben C. Green Professor of Law. She joined the faculty in 2003 after practicing First Amendment and civil rights law with the firm of Berkman, Gordon, Murray & DeVan in Cleveland. Before entering private practice, Hill worked at the Reproductive Freedom Project of the national ACLU office in New York, litigating challenges to state-law restrictions on reproductive rights. She also served as law clerk to the Honorable Karen Nelson Moore of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Hill's teaching focuses on constitutional law, civil rights, reproductive rights, and law and religion. Her scholarship has been published in the Michigan Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Texas Law Review, among others. Hill earned her Bachelor of Arts from Brown University and her Juris Doctor from Harvard University.

Jochum, is an attorney and Executive Director of Equality Ohio. She received her Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science from Baldwin Wallace University and Juris Doctor from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. She has been passionately engaged in the fight for LGBTQ+ equality at the local, state, national, and international level for more than a decade. Jochum spent time in Mumbai, India volunteering with the Humsafar Trust, a nongovernmental organization working to advance LGBTQ+ equality in India. After returning home, she worked at United Way of Greater Cleveland and continued her LGBTQ+ volunteer work through the Human Rights Campaign. She became an Associate at Squire Patton Boggs, LLP where she focused her legal practice on complex civil litigation, international law, product liability disputes and other commercial litigation. She also represented clients in habeas proceedings before the Sixth Circuit and at the District court level. Jochum left Squire in 2014 to work with Equality Ohio full time where she has the privilege of advocating for LGBTQ+ equality statewide. She also proudly serves as a Board member for the Equality Federation, a national organization focused on capacity building and support for statewide LGBTQ+ organizations across the country.

Storms is the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington (ACLU of Washington), former Deputy Director of the ACLU of Washington, and previous Assistant Dean for Public Service and executive director of the William H. Gates Public Service Law program at the University of Washington School of Law. Preceding those roles she served as a statewide advocacy coordinator first at Columbia Legal Services and later at the Northwest Justice Project where over a combined five-year period she coordinated civil legal aid advocacy in the areas of family law, youth and education, housing, elder law, Native American and right to counsel issues. She was also previously on faculty at the University of Washington School of Law where she founded what is now the Child and Youth Advocacy Clinic and taught several other courses. In addition to her service on numerous boards and guilds both locally and nationally, Storms served on the Washington State Access to Justice Board for six years and the board of One America. Storms is concerned with equity and justice for all and has dedicated her professional and personal attention to access to justice, preservation of freedom and democracy for all and ensuring that all humans safely reside in the “circle of human concern.”