By Annie Hagstrom
Michigan Law
Libby Antonneau has been selected as a 2026 Equal Justice Works (EJW) Fellow. She is the 47th Michigan Law graduate to receive an EJW Fellowship in the program’s 40-year history.
“I’m excited and honored to have been selected,” said Antonneau. “It’s a competitive process, and obtaining funding for civil legal organizations is only getting harder. I’m from Southeastern Wisconsin, and throughout law school, I have been drawn more and more to returning to where I grew up. It’s incredibly meaningful to be given the opportunity to use what I’ve learned to help make my community a better place to live.”
This year, through the EJW’s Design-Your-Own Fellowship program, a class of 60 fellows will be working across 21 states on issues ranging from affordable housing and disability rights to legal issues arising in tech.
“I have worked with Libby since her 1L year, and it has been an honor watching her grow into a passionate, committed, hard-working advocate,” said Emily Bretz, ’11, public interest director for Michigan Law’s Office of Career Planning. “Her dedication to her project and to the people of her home state is inspiring. I feel lucky to have been a part of her journey, and I cannot wait to see what amazing things she accomplishes as a public interest lawyer.”
—————
A focus on preventative measures
Throughout the next two years, Antonneau will work for the housing team at Legal Action of Wisconsin, a civil legal services organization in Milwaukee. Her three-part project is designed to help low-income tenants remedy hazardous housing conditions.
The first part of her project will focus on conducting in-person or online trainings, where community members can learn about their legal rights as tenants. Then, Antonneau will help establish a rent abatement clinic to assist renters with properly reducing or withholding rent as needed. Her final course of action will be to help renters pursue affirmative legal action against landlords who fail to comply with relevant housing laws.
“Many renters who experience substandard housing are not aware of their legal rights to habitable housing,” she said. “The idea behind the rent abatement clinic is to address this gap because if they don’t know their rights, renters might engage in forms of ‘self-help’ that in turn give the landlord the right to evict them under the law.”
Antonneau’s work with Legal Action of Wisconsin aims to reach people before they take any step deemed improper and to assist them in asserting their rights.
“Legal Action does a lot of work with people who are already facing an eviction, which is how they discovered a need for preventative measures,” she said.
—————
Housing justice as an extension of environmental justice
In 2025, Antonneau received a Dow Sustainability Fellowship; the program, through the U-M Graham Sustainability Institute, brings together graduate students from schools and colleges across the University. Over the last year, she and a team of U-M students—hailing from the School of Social Work, the Taubman School of Architecture and Urban Planning, and the School for Environment and Sustainability—worked with the National Wildlife Federation to research critical mineral extraction on private lands in the US. Her role, in particular, was to oversee the legal and policy side of the team’s analysis of mineral extraction.
“As the only law student on my Dow Fellowship team, my peers all brought very different skills, and we had to figure out how to work together,” she said. “That experience taught me how to manage and define the parameters of a project and set goals that are achievable in a short timeline, which will only help me in my EJW fellowship project.”
Also, throughout the last year, Antonneau served as the managing editor of the Michigan Journal of Environmental and Administrative Law and has worked as a student-attorney in Michigan Law’s Civil-Criminal Litigation Clinic.
“In the clinic, I worked with clients on a broad range of housing issues,” she said. “That has really helped me feel confident in my skills to hit the ground running at Legal Action. It’s been so helpful to have the supervision of professors in the clinical setting before I do this work outside of law school.”
Antonneau said the environmental justice work she has done throughout her time at Michigan Law has been formative, especially in her decision to return to her home state of Wisconsin.
“I see housing justice as an extension of environmental justice, helping people create a safer physical environment that can help them succeed in other areas of life,” she said. “My confidence to pursue my goals in this area of work is because of the support of my ambitious and kind classmates and professors at Michigan Law.”
Michigan Law
Libby Antonneau has been selected as a 2026 Equal Justice Works (EJW) Fellow. She is the 47th Michigan Law graduate to receive an EJW Fellowship in the program’s 40-year history.
“I’m excited and honored to have been selected,” said Antonneau. “It’s a competitive process, and obtaining funding for civil legal organizations is only getting harder. I’m from Southeastern Wisconsin, and throughout law school, I have been drawn more and more to returning to where I grew up. It’s incredibly meaningful to be given the opportunity to use what I’ve learned to help make my community a better place to live.”
This year, through the EJW’s Design-Your-Own Fellowship program, a class of 60 fellows will be working across 21 states on issues ranging from affordable housing and disability rights to legal issues arising in tech.
“I have worked with Libby since her 1L year, and it has been an honor watching her grow into a passionate, committed, hard-working advocate,” said Emily Bretz, ’11, public interest director for Michigan Law’s Office of Career Planning. “Her dedication to her project and to the people of her home state is inspiring. I feel lucky to have been a part of her journey, and I cannot wait to see what amazing things she accomplishes as a public interest lawyer.”
—————
A focus on preventative measures
Throughout the next two years, Antonneau will work for the housing team at Legal Action of Wisconsin, a civil legal services organization in Milwaukee. Her three-part project is designed to help low-income tenants remedy hazardous housing conditions.
The first part of her project will focus on conducting in-person or online trainings, where community members can learn about their legal rights as tenants. Then, Antonneau will help establish a rent abatement clinic to assist renters with properly reducing or withholding rent as needed. Her final course of action will be to help renters pursue affirmative legal action against landlords who fail to comply with relevant housing laws.
“Many renters who experience substandard housing are not aware of their legal rights to habitable housing,” she said. “The idea behind the rent abatement clinic is to address this gap because if they don’t know their rights, renters might engage in forms of ‘self-help’ that in turn give the landlord the right to evict them under the law.”
Antonneau’s work with Legal Action of Wisconsin aims to reach people before they take any step deemed improper and to assist them in asserting their rights.
“Legal Action does a lot of work with people who are already facing an eviction, which is how they discovered a need for preventative measures,” she said.
—————
Housing justice as an extension of environmental justice
In 2025, Antonneau received a Dow Sustainability Fellowship; the program, through the U-M Graham Sustainability Institute, brings together graduate students from schools and colleges across the University. Over the last year, she and a team of U-M students—hailing from the School of Social Work, the Taubman School of Architecture and Urban Planning, and the School for Environment and Sustainability—worked with the National Wildlife Federation to research critical mineral extraction on private lands in the US. Her role, in particular, was to oversee the legal and policy side of the team’s analysis of mineral extraction.
“As the only law student on my Dow Fellowship team, my peers all brought very different skills, and we had to figure out how to work together,” she said. “That experience taught me how to manage and define the parameters of a project and set goals that are achievable in a short timeline, which will only help me in my EJW fellowship project.”
Also, throughout the last year, Antonneau served as the managing editor of the Michigan Journal of Environmental and Administrative Law and has worked as a student-attorney in Michigan Law’s Civil-Criminal Litigation Clinic.
“In the clinic, I worked with clients on a broad range of housing issues,” she said. “That has really helped me feel confident in my skills to hit the ground running at Legal Action. It’s been so helpful to have the supervision of professors in the clinical setting before I do this work outside of law school.”
Antonneau said the environmental justice work she has done throughout her time at Michigan Law has been formative, especially in her decision to return to her home state of Wisconsin.
“I see housing justice as an extension of environmental justice, helping people create a safer physical environment that can help them succeed in other areas of life,” she said. “My confidence to pursue my goals in this area of work is because of the support of my ambitious and kind classmates and professors at Michigan Law.”
––––––––––––––––––––
Subscribe to the Legal News!
https://legalnews.com/Home/Subscription
Full access to public notices, articles, columns, archives, statistics, calendar and more
Day Pass Only $4.95!
One-County $80/year
Three-County & Full Pass also available
