Evelyn M. Rangel-Medina is an interdisciplinary legal scholar whose work examines how the interplay among civil rights, immigration, and employment systems produces disparate outcomes for working people and mixed-status families of color. She writes and teaches in constitutional law, criminal procedure, employment discrimination law, and race and the law. She is an Associate Professor of Law at Temple University’s James E. Beasley School of Law and currently serves as a Visiting Scholar with the Civil Rights, Migration and Workplace Law Initiative at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.
Professor Rangel-Medina’s primary theoretical contribution is “citizenism,” a pathbreaking framework that analyzes how immigration and citizenship status distribute racialized rights and belonging through race-neutral legal doctrines. Her research has appeared or is forthcoming in leading journals, including the Boston University Law Review, the Boston College Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal Online, and the UC Irvine Law Review. She is also developing a book project, From Unaccompanied Minor to Law Professor, that bridges complex legal theories and public-facing discourse.
Professor Rangel-Medina translates theory into federal constitutional litigation and public-interest service. She originated and led a nationwide coalition of scholars, in collaboration with the Aoki Center for Critical Race and Nation Studies at UC Davis School of Law, to file a Supreme Court amicus brief in Trump v. Barbara, 146 S. Ct. 2438 (2026). She also serves as a Non-Resident Fellow at the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at UC Irvine School of Law and sits on the Board of Directors of Justice at Work Pennsylvania and the Restaurant Organizing Collective in Washington, DC.
Professor Rangel-Medina earned her Juris Doctor from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where she served as Associate Editor of the Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law, as a Fellow at the International Human Rights Clinic, and as Co-Chair of the Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion. Upon graduation, she received the Francine Marie Diaz Social Justice Memorial Award and was named an inaugural University of California Presidential Public Interest Law Fellow. She also graduated magna cum laude from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, with three Bachelor of Arts degrees in English Literature, Women’s Studies, and Political Science, with a specialization in Public Policy and International Relations. The first in her family to attend college in the United States, she graduated from the Community College of Southern Nevada, where she earned an Associate of Arts degree in English with high honors, served as Student Body President, and was recognized as a Regents’ Scholar.