–The Chicago-Kent team of Jewell Ewing ’20 and Andrea Mireles ’20 will advance to the national rounds of the 2019 Thurgood Marshall Moot Court Competition, sponsored by the National Black Law Student Association (NBLSA). The team placed second in the Midwest regional tournament, held February 6–8 in Chicago.

Ewing and Mireles secured their spot at nationals by defeating the John Marshall Law School in the semifinal round. In the final round, they fell to a team from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, which won the competition.

Chicago-Kent—along with Cleveland-Marshall and the third-place team—will compete against the top three teams from each of five other regions at the national tournament, to be held in March at the NBLSA National Convention in Little Rock, Arkansas.

This year students argued a hypothetical First Amendment case involving a professional football player fined by the National Football League for kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and injustices faced by communities of color. At issue in the case was whether the league could be treated as a state actor when it entered into a lease agreement with a county, whether the football player was protected from discipline when the terms of his employment contract seemingly allowed him to kneel, and whether the football player was entitled to equitable tolling when he filed his claim late.

Ewing graduated magna cum laude from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in sociology. Mireles earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The team was coached by Professor Michael Gentithes and organized by student Bryant Roby, president of the Chicago-Kent chapter of the Black Law Student Association. In preparation for the competition, the team was also aided by Chicago-Kent students Alexander Atkins, Jeffrey Czerwionka, Michael McGee, Bryant Roby and Nick Ulen; University of Chicago student Darrius Atkins; and alumnus Reginald Lys ’18. Additionally, Professors Martin Malin, César Rosado Marzán, Mark Rosen, and Sheldon Nahmod provided guidance to the team.

The Thurgood Marshall Moot Court Competition was created to provide NBLSA members with an opportunity to enhance their brief writing and advocacy skills. NBLSA is dedicated to providing minority law students with the skills necessary to succeed in the legal profession.