Women and people who can become pregnant in the U.S. territories experience particularized harms often rooted in U.S. colonization and the territories’ political relationship with the United States. From reproductive harms to economic challenges characterized by dangerously limited access to critical public benefits, women’s intersectional lived experiences are often marginalized or ignored. This Essay describes how traditional legal frameworks can sharply constrict available remedies and tend to further—or at least maintain—the U.S. colonial project. It then employs theories of intersectionality and coloniality to sketch the contours of a rational-basis-with-bite framework that would oblige the parties to ventilate issues fully and closely examine likely consequences. In doing so, it begins to chart a theoretical and pragmatic path for assessing territorial residents’ challenges to exclusionary laws while leaving room for beneficial laws that promote communities’ self-determination.

- The Yale Law Journal

- VOLUME 134

Susan K. Serrano is a distinguished legal scholar and advocate specializing in civil rights, Native Hawaiian law, and the legal impacts of U.S. colonialism on Indigenous and territorial communities. She serves as the Fred T. Korematsu Professor of Law and Social Justice at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. In addition, she is the Associate Director and Director of Research and Scholarship at the Ka Huli Ao Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law .catalog.hawaii.edu+5law.hawaii.edu+5hoku.law.hawaii.edu+5law.hawaii.edu+1law.hawaii.edu+1

🎓 Education and Early Career

• B.A., University of California, Berkeley (1992)

• J.D., William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaiʻi (1998)

During law school, Serrano was the Articles Editor for the University of Hawaiʻi Law Review and received the Trina Grillo Award for Best Student Paper in Critical Race Theory for her article, “Rethinking Race for Strict Scrutiny Purposes: Yniguez and the Racialization of English Only” 

🏛️ Legal and Advocacy Work

Before joining academia, Serrano dedicated her career to civil rights and social justice advocacy:law.hawaii.edu

• Staff Attorney at the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco

• Founding Research Director of the Equal Justice Society (2001–2005)

• Thurgood Marshall Fellow at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area (2000–2001)

• Law Clerk for Associate Justices Robert G. Klein and Mario R. Ramil of the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court .