Katherine Macfarlane

Professor & Director of Disability Law and Policy Program

Syracuse College of Law

Professor Katherine Macfarlane is a leading expert on civil rights litigation and disability law. She serves as Director of the Syracuse University College of Law’s Disability Law and Policy Program. Her scholarship has appeared in or will appear in the Fordham Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, Alabama Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal Forum, among others. Before entering academia, Professor Macfarlane was an Assistant Corporation Counsel in the New York City Law Department and an associate in Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan’s Los Angeles and New York offices. She also clerked for the District of Arizona and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Professor Macfarlane received her B.A., magna cum laude, from Northwestern University, and her J.D., cum laude, from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, where she was Chief Articles Editor of the Loyola Law Review. She is admitted to practice in California and New York. During the 2022-2023 academic year, Professor Macfarlane served as Special Counsel to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. There, she worked on the Department’s overhaul of the regulations implementing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, focusing on the regulations’ higher education provisions.