Deborah Dorfman

Executive Director/Attorney, Disability Rights Connecticut

Adjunct Faculty

Deborah is the executive director of Disability Rights Connecticut and an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law, where she teaches the Disability Rights Clinic. She has 30 years of experience litigating individual and class actions, as well as other systemic reform cases, in the areas of disability and related law. Her work focuses on legal issues pertaining to people with intellectual or mental health disabilities, juvenile justice, access to Medicaid and state-funded services and other public benefits, Olmstead and other disability discrimination, special education, prison and jail conditions, abuse and neglect, fair housing, civil commitment, and forensic mental health, among other issues.

Prior to working at Disability Rights Connecticut , Dorfman was the managing attorney for the Everett Field Office of the Northwest Justice Project in Washington state. She has also worked at the Center for Public Representation, Disability Rights California, Disability Rights Washington and the Disability Law Center in Utah, among other disability rights legal organization around the United States. Dorfman has also been an adjunct professor at New York Law School in the Mental Disability Law Online Program and at St. John’s School of Law. She has given numerous presentations, nationally and internationally, and published a number of articles on disability rights issues. Dorfman received her law degree from New York Law School in 1992. She also has an MA in History from New York University and a BA in Social Science from the University of California at Berkeley.