ACLU of Maine Announces 2025 Justice Louis Scolnik Award Recipient

PORTLAND – The ACLU of Maine will present its 32nd Justice Louis Scolnik Award to Professor Anna Welch, founding director of the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic at Maine Law, at a celebration in Portland on Wednesday, November 12.

The Justice Louis Scolnik Award was established in 1989 to recognize Mainers who have demonstrated an outstanding commitment to the protection of civil rights and civil liberties. The award is named for the late Maine Supreme Court Justice Louis Scolnik, co-founder and first president of the ACLU of Maine.

“At a time when immigrants’ rights and due process for all people are under attack like never before, we are thrilled to honor Professor Welch’s leadership at the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic and her work preparing and inspiring young people to advance public interest law,” said ACLU of Maine Executive Director Molly Curren Rowles. “Through her courses, her fieldwork, and as a clinical professor and attorney, Professor Welch is meeting the needs of those most vulnerable while inspiring a new generation of immigration advocates.”

Under Professor Welch’s leadership, the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic received the 2022 Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) Award for Excellence in a Public Interest Case or Project. This honor was conferred in recognition of the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic’s multi-year investigation into concerning practices at the Boston Asylum Office. The report, Lives in Limbo: How the Boston Asylum Office Fails Asylum Seekers, was published in partnership with the ACLU of Maine, the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project (ILAP), and Dr. Basileus Zeno.

In addition to supervising law students on direct representation matters for asylum seekers and other vulnerable individuals, Professor Welch has launched a number of outreach and advocacy projects in collaboration with a range of partners, including the ACLU of Maine. For example, over the last several years, students in the clinic have assisted immigrants in civil immigration custody within jails, prisons, and private detention centers throughout New England, the U.S., and at the U.S./Mexico border in Laredo, Texas. Through these projects, student attorneys in the clinic provide legal resources and limited legal advice to individuals who otherwise lack legal help. The lack of readily available legal help for immigrants is an ongoing crisis, and detained immigrants are not afforded the constitutional right to an attorney despite the often life-or-death stakes at play. This work reflects the clinic’s dual mission of training future lawyers while engaging in broader outreach and advocacy.

A Maine native, Professor Welch graduated with high honors and highest distinction (Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she studied journalism and Spanish. She then went to the Washington College of Law at American University. Following a Fulbright Scholarship in Peru, Professor Welch practiced at the law firm Verrill, eventually as the head of the firm’s Immigration & Global Migration Group. She then served as a fellow at Stanford Law School, where she taught and supervised students within Stanford’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. In 2012, Professor Welch returned to Maine and launched the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic at Maine Law.

WHAT:
Celebration and award program with cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and live music by Kafari

WHERE:
Ocean Gateway
14 Ocean Gateway Pier
Portland, Maine 04101

WHEN:
Wednesday, November 12, 2025
5 - 7 p.m.

TICKETS:
Media may attend the event by confirming with Samuel Crankshaw. Please email [email protected].

Tickets and sponsorships are available for purchase at ACLUMaine.org/2025ScolnikAward