Kathryn (Kate) E. Fort is the Director of Clinics at Michigan State University College of Law and runs the Indian Law Clinic, where she teaches the Clinic class and other classes in federal Indian law. In 2015, she started the Indian Child Welfare Act Appellate Project, which represents tribes in complex ICWA litigation across the country. She is the author of American Indian Children and the Law, published by Carolina Academic Press. Prof. Fort has researched and written extensively on the Indian Child Welfare Act. Her publications include articles in the Harvard Public Health Review, George Mason Law Review, Family Law Quarterly, Saint Louis University Law Journal, American Indian Law Review as well as chapters in Critical Race Judgements (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and Child Welfare Law and Practice (National Assoc. of Counsel for Children, 2023), both with Matthew L.M. Fletcher. She co-edited Facing the Future: The Indian Child Welfare Act at 30 (Michigan State University Press, 2009) and she is a contributing editor to the Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law. She is an original contributor to the Indian law blog, Turtle Talk. Prof. Fort has provided direct representation to tribes in the Washington, Colorado, and Michigan Supreme Courts, the Ohio, Illinois, and Tennessee Court of Appeals, the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and Ninth U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals, as well as the United States Supreme Court. More recently she obtained significant funding to start the Tribal Appellate Clerk Project which, as part of the Indian Law Clinic, allows law students to assist tribal appellate courts by providing research and memos on appellate tribal cases.

Prof. Fort graduated magna cum laude from Michigan State University College of Law with a Certificate in Indigenous Law and is licensed to practice law in Michigan. She received her B.A. in History with honors from Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.