Michelle Travis

Professor Michelle Travis is a Dean’s Circle Scholar and Co-Director of USF's Work Law and Justice Program. She specializes in employment law with a focus on disability discrimination, sex discrimination, and work/family balance. Her interdisciplinary scholarship uses social cognition and sociology research to reveal how antidiscrimination law could be used to eliminate structural, organizational, and cognitive biases in the workplace. She regularly speaks on these topics around the country, including at a Senate Roundtable as an expert on workplace flexibility. Travis serves on the editorial board of the Chicago–Kent Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal, and her articles have been published in the California Law Review, the Vanderbilt Law Review, the Washington and Lee Law Review, and the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, among others. She is a founding member of the Work and Family Researchers Network and she is a former chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Employment Discrimination Law. Travis teaches Employment Law, Torts, Remedies, and Work/Family Law, and she has received four distinguished teaching awards. She served as the Associate Dean for Faculty Scholarship at USF from 2013-2016.

Michelle is the author of the book, Dads For Daughters, which is a guide for male allyship to support gender equity. She is also the author of an award-winning children's picture book, My Mom Has Two Jobs, which celebrates working moms.

• Employment Law
• Employment Discrimination Law
• Work/Family Law

• BA, Cornell University
• JD, Stanford University

• Assistant Professor, Lewis & Clark Law School
• Adjunct Professor, Santa Clara School of Law
• Teaching Fellow, Stanford Law School
• Employment Litigation Associate, Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe
• Law Clerk, Hon. David M. Ebel, U.S. Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit

• John Adler Distinguished Professor Award, USF School of Law (2016)
• Distinguished Professor Award, USF School of Law (2014)
• Distinguished Professor Award, USF School of Law (2006)
• Leo Levinson Award for Most Outstanding Professor, Lewis & Clark Law School (2003)

• Dads for Daughters: How Fathers Can Give Their Daughters a Better, Brighter, Fairer Future (Mango, 2020)

• “A Post-Pandemic Antidiscrimination Approach to Workplace Flexibility,” 64 Washington University Journal of Law and Policy (January 2021).
• “Gendering Disability to Enable Disability Rights Law,” 105 California Law Review (2017). SSRN
• “Disqualifying Universality Under the Americans with Disabilities Act,” 2015 Michigan State Law Review 1689 (2015). SSRN
• “Disabling the Gender Pay Gap: Lessons from the Social Model of Disability,” Denver Law Review (2014). SSRN
• “The Part and Parcel of Impairment Discrimination,” 17 Employee Rights & Employment Policy Journal 35 (2013). SSRN
• “Impairment as Protected Status: A New Universality for Disability Rights,” 46 Georgia Law Review (2012). SSRN
• “Toward Positive Equality: Taking the Disparate Impact Out of Disparate Impact Theory,” 16 Lewis & Clark Law Review 527 (2012). SSRN
• “What a Difference a Day Makes, Or Does It? Work/Family Balance and the Four-Day Work Week,” 42 Connecticut Law Review 1223 (2010). SSRN
• “The Future of Work-Family Policy: Is 'Choice' the Right Choice?,” 13 Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal 385 (2009). SSRN
• “Lashing Back at the ADA Backlash: How the Americans With Disabilities Act Benefits Americans Without Disabilities,” 76 Tennessee Law Review 311 (2009). SSRN
• “The PDA's Causation Effect: Observations of an Unreasonable Woman,” 21 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 51 (2009). SSRN
• “The Full-Time Face-Time Norm: Lessons from the United Kingdom,” 10 Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal 257 (2006). (Proceedings of the 2006 AALS Section on Labor Relations and Employment Law Annual Meeting. )
• “Recapturing the Transformative Potential of Employment Discrimination Law,” 62 Washington and Lee Law Review 1 (2005). SSRN
• “Equality in the Virtual Workplace,” 24 Berkeley Journal of Employment & Labor Law 283 (2003). SSRN
• “Perceived Disabilities, Social Cognition, and Innocent Mistakes,” 55 Vanderbilt Law Review 481 (2002). SSRN
• “Telecommuting: The Escher Stairway of Work/Family Conflict,” 55 Maine Law Review 262 (2002). SSRN
• “Leveling the Playing Field or Stacking the Deck? The 'Unfair Advantage' Critique of Perceived Disability Claims,” 78 North Carolina Law Review 901 (2000). SSRN
• “Psychological Health Tests for Violence-Prone Police Officers: Objectives, Shortcomings, and Alternatives,” 46 Stanford Law Review 1717 (1994).
• “Defending the Indigent During a War on Crime,” 1 Cornell Journal of Law & Public Policy 69 (1992). (Co-authored with John Martin.)