New Voices at USF Law: Associate Professor Megan Wachspress
Associate Professor Megan Wachspress’ path to higher ed has taken her from labor litigation and appellate clerkships to environmental advocacy work challenging utilities and coal plants across the Midwest. Along the way, her work centered on questions of justice, public policy, and social change.
“I think I’ve always wanted to be a part of movements to address injustice,” Wachspress said.
After graduating from law school, Wachspress clerked for Justice Goodwin Liu of the California Supreme Court and Judge William Fletcher of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She later joined Altshuler Berzon, representing unions and workers in labor and employment disputes involving discrimination, wage theft, and government transparency issues.
Eventually, the climate crisis shifted the focus of her work. Wachspress joined the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, where she litigated against utilities to prevent the construction of new gas plants and accelerate the retirement of coal plants.
During this time, “I came to belatedly realize how urgent the climate crisis is and how unequally its impacts will be felt,” she said. "All of these inequities of citizenship, economics, race, and gender were going to be turbocharged by global warming."
After years in practice, Wachspress realized she wanted to combine advocacy with scholarship and teaching. Before entering academia, she volunteered as an instructor at Mount Tamalpais College at San Quentin and later taught legal writing at Stanford Law School as a Thomas C. Grey Fellow.
Wachspress said she was drawn to USF because of its commitment to social justice.
In the classroom, Wachspress blends doctrinal rigor with humor, storytelling, and real-world examples drawn directly from practice.
“Thrills! Chills! Dramatic twists! Melodrama!” she said when asked what students can expect from her courses.
More seriously, she hopes students leave each class feeling “like they’ve been on a little intellectual adventure.”
Her courses incorporate real litigation documents, environmental impact statements, and examples from her years working in environmental law.
“I have six years’ worth of examples of how to go about suing a coal plant,” she said, “and I am excited to bring those examples into the classroom.” Wachspress hopes students come away with a broader understanding of environmental law and the human impact at the center of it.
“For better or worse, environmental law is about people,” she said. “It’s overwhelmingly driven by human concerns.”