Melissa Kay joined NARF in September 2024 as an inaugural Tribal Water Institute Fellow based in the Boulder office. As a Tribal Water Institute Fellow, Melissa is working on a variety of Tribal water issues, including the Idaho v. EPA Clean Water Act Tribal reserved rights rule case and multiple federal administrative permitting and relicensing processes affecting Tribal water rights.

Melissa brings a broad range of specialized experience that she accumulated during law school, where she focused on environmental/energy justice and Tribal sovereignty/federal Indian law. Through Yale’s Environmental Protection Clinic, Melissa spent one year working with Kanji & Katzen on the Bad River Band’s Enbridge Line 5 litigation. She also served as a student researcher on the NYU-Yale American Indian Sovereignty Project, supporting an amicus brief for Arizona v. Navajo Nation, and through Yale Law and Yale School for the Environment’s Tribal Resources & Sovereignty Clinic she worked with the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. Melissa spent her first summer working for Forest Peoples Programme, and during her second summer, she interned at the Department of Justice, Environment and Natural Resources Division, Indian Resources Section.

Find Melissa on LinkedIn.

Education

• Yale Law School, J.D.
• Washington University in St. Louis, B.A. International and Area Studies (Development) and Arabic

Admissions to Practice

• California (pending swearing-in ceremony)