Fawn Rajbhandari-Korr, Training Director and Senior Counsel
Fawn litigates impact cases across multiple practice areas to address systemic problems facing marginalized communities. She is also an experienced trial attorney with expertise in domestic violence and family law. She centers anti-racist and feminist lawyering in all her work.
Fawn’s current cases include:
Erdmann-Browning v. Vilsack (N.D. Cal.), a proposed nationwide class action seeking temporary restraining order and/or preliminary injunction to prevent USDA from interrupting SNAP benefits during any government shutdown.
Farrell v. Department of Defense (N.D. Cal.), a proposed class of veterans discharged during Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and earlier policies that carry markers of their sexual orientation on their discharge papers.
U.S. ex rel. Terry v. Wasatch Advantage Group, LLC (E.D. Cal.), a class action on behalf housing voucher recipients at specific properties in California and the West Coast who were required to pay excess rent.
Fawn also leads the Impact Fund’s attorney training program, including the organization’s annual Class Action Conference, Summer Online Training Series, and three-day Class Action Training Institute. Fawn has trained attorneys on topics including civil litigation procedure, trial practice, deposition skills, ethics in high-volume legal services representation, domestic violence theory and practice, and tools to interrupt implicit bias during direct examination and in trial briefs.
Before joining the Impact Fund, Fawn worked in Bay Area Legal Aid’s impact litigation unit as senior litigation counsel and in its domestic violence unit as a trial attorney. Fawn was responsible for overseeing BayLegal’s attorneys’ fees practice and supervising staff attorneys working on impact cases. Her work as a trial and appellate lawyer for survivors of domestic violence led to the establishment of key precedent in City and County of San Francisco v. H.H. (2022) 76 Cal.App.5th 531. The lawsuit that she led against the San Francisco Police Department in Lu et al v. City and County of San Francisco et al. resulted in compliance procedures that increased SFPD’s transparency and accountability.
Fawn graduated from Hampshire College and received her law degree from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Fawn was a community organizer prior to law school where she worked to advance women’s rights in occupied territories.
Fawn is licensed in Hawaiʻi and California