Layla Hughes has 25 years of experience in international and domestic policy and law, with a focus on resource extraction and human rights.
Since 2003, Ms. Hughes has worked extensively on offshore and onshore oil and gas development in the Arctic, leading litigation and strategic advocacy on behalf of conservation and indigenous clients. She currently works to limit fossil fuel production on federal public lands. From 2020-2022, she was a full-time consultant for Earthjustice, where she worked on the Pebble Mine campaign and was on the team that brought and successfully won the first round of litigation over the controversial Willow oil project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A).
After moving to Alaska to join Earthjustice as an associate attorney in 2003, Ms. Hughes moved to Utqiagvik to serve as assistant borough attorney for the North Slope Borough from 2006-2008. She represented the Borough in litigation challenging offshore oil and gas leasing as well as Shell’s offshore oil exploration, which resulted in an injunction and the invalidation of the company’s drilling permits. She also advised the Borough planning department on municipal oil and gas permitting, represented the Borough in negotiations with the State of Alaska on various oil and gas issues, and served as the Borough’s cooperating agency representative in the Bureau of Land Management’s Northeast NPR-A leasing process.
Upon leaving the Borough, Ms. Hughes worked as arctic policy officer for WWF until 2012. In this role, she continued her participation in offshore oil and gas litigation, served as a commissioner on the State of Alaska Arctic Policy Commission, was a member of the US delegation in the negotiations of the Arctic Council’s Oil Spill Response Agreement, and published numerous articles on arctic oil spill response capacity and other oil and gas issues.
Ms. Hughes became an independent consultant in 2012, representing various conservation and indigenous groups in domestic and international issues. She successfully challenged a Clean Water Act permit in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and has advised other indigenous clients including the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, the Bering Straits Coastal Association, Aleut International Association, and the Arctic Marine Mammal Coalition. Her conservation clients include Friends of the Earth, WWF, Natural Resources Defense Council, and others. Ms. Hughes has provided these groups with legal, policy, scientific and technical advice and represented them in litigation and in advocacy efforts with local, federal, and international government. She has also provided in-depth analyses of subsistence issues, including a comprehensive survey of all subsistence studies and interviews with subsistence users in villages on the Bering Sea coast and the creation of a training manual for indigenous communities to use to map their marine subsistence use areas.
Since 2014, Ms. Hughes has worked as an attorney for the Center for Intenational Environmental Law and as an advisor to various human rights organizations participating in various UN international negotiations related to climate change, chemicals and plastic regulation, international trade and investment, and the liability of international corporations. She has also worked as a consultant to the UN on issues related to plastic pollution and climate change.
Ms. Hughes earned her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and is admitted to practice before the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court. She is licensed to practice law in Alaska, Maryland, and Washington D.C.