Megha Ram

Megha Ram is an attorney in the Supreme Court and Appellate Program of the MacArthur Justice Center. In this role, she litigates civil rights cases across the country with a focus on challenging poor medical care, violence, and inhumane conditions in jails and prisons. She also litigates access-to-courts issues and represents those subjected to police and prosecutorial misconduct. In addition to her work at the MacArthur Justice Center, Megha also co-teaches the Prisoners’ Rights Clinic at UCLA Law School.

While at the MacArthur Justice Center, Megha has presented oral argument in multiple federal and state courts of appeals, and has authored dozens of appellate briefs on a wide range of civil rights issues. Representative cases include Lance v. Morris, where she convinced the Tenth Circuit to reject qualified immunity for officers who ignored a pretrial detainee’s serious medical condition and to authorize liability against a municipality for its deficient training and dangerous medical care policies; and People v. Smith, where she convinced the Illinois Appellate Court to grant her client a new suppression hearing in light of newly-discovered evidence of police torture.

Megha graduated from Yale Law School in 2018, after which she clerked for Judge Michael P. Shea on the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. During law school, she spent five semesters in the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic and was a co-chair of the Clinical Student Board. She was also a member of the International Refugee Assistance Project and an editor on the Yale Law Journal. Megha received her B.A. in International Studies-Economics from the University of California, San Diego, where she graduated summa cum laude.