Harbani Ahuja is an Senior Counsel with the Economic Justice Program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.

Prior to joining the Institute, Harbani served as Senior Legislative Counsel to the New York City Council, where she led and facilitated the legislative process for the Committees on Civil and Human Rights, Immigration, Health, Hospitals, and the Subcommittee on COVID Recovery and Resiliency. Harbani drafted and negotiated several critical bills that were passed into law, including a historic package of legislation addressing significant disparities in maternal health, mortality, and morbidity. Harbani was formerly an Agency Attorney with the NYC Commission on Human Rights, where she investigated claims of discrimination.

Harbani holds a J.D. with a concentration in Constitutional Law and Rights from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where she served as Notes Editor for the Cardozo Law Review, and a Public Service Scholars Fellow. Harbani also holds a B.B.A from Macaulay Honors College at CUNY Baruch College. She is admitted to practice law in New York and New Jersey.

Harbani’s creative work can be found in Her Name is Kaur: Sikh Women Write about Love, Courage, and Faith. She is currently working on her latest project, entitled Dicta, as an Artist in Residence with ICAAD. Dicta, featured in the ABA Journal and Law360, seeks to unearth the essence of decisions by courts of law in order to illuminate the broader societal context in which they were written.