EJS, Others File Brief on Prelim. Injunction Against Ariz. Anti-Immigrant Statute
The Equal Justice Society, the Asian American Institute and thirty-six other public interest organizations, represented pro bono by the law firm Covington & Burling LLP, have filed an amicus brief in Friendly House v. Whiting, supporting the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction against SB 1070, Arizona’s disturbing new immigration statute.
The lawsuit, a class action filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, challenges the constitutionality of this recently passed law on the grounds that it invites the racial profiling of people of color, violates the First Amendment and interferes with federal law.
The amicus brief argues that an injunction is justified on three principal grounds.
First, SB 1070 will result in discrimination against communities of color. Although the statute was written seemingly to exclude the possibility of racial profiling, in practice, there is no question but that this law will lead to heightened and disproportionate police scrutiny of minorities. Because Mexico is the nearest border, Latinos especially will be targeted under SB 1070.
Second, this bill threatens public safety in Arizona. If enforced, it will breed resentment and distrust of the police in communities of color. Fearing immigration inquiries, communities of color are very likely to report crime less, making their neighborhoods increasingly unsafe. Moreover, the under-reporting of crime in minority communities will render them even more vulnerable to hate crimes.
Finally, the bill, ostensibly designed to reduce crime, simply does not justify the means. American history is sadly littered with numerous statutes aimed at excluding certain minority groups from the benefits, rights, and liberties granted to the majority. The courts have struck down those laws for over 150 years. SB 1070 is in keeping with this sordid past and must also be struck down.
EJS and Other Organizations File Amicus Brief Supporting Application of Voting Rights Act and Protection of Minority Voting Rights
The Equal Justice Society (EJS), the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, and American Parole and Probation Association submitted an Amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit case Farrakhan v. Gregoire, which will determine whether Washington State’s felon disenfranchisement law violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA). (Download a PDF of the brief here.)
Earlier this year, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit held that Washington State’s law denying the vote to people with felony convictions is racially discriminatory and violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The case is now scheduled for rehearing en banc by an eleven-judge panel in September.
EJS agrees with the three-judge panel’s conclusion that Washington’s law is racially discriminatory and violates the VRA by disproportionately disenfranchising both individuals and communities of color. As a result of Washington’s law, 24 percent of Black men and 15 percent of Washington’s Black population have lost their voting rights because of felony convictions.
Our brief, in particular, focuses on the importance of voting rights to successful reintegration and rehabilitation for formerly incarcerated persons. Not only do felon disenfranchisement policies impede political participation and successful re-entry of formerly incarcerated individuals, they also impact entire communities by diluting their collective voting strength.
Section 2 of the VRA was enacted to protect against racial discrimination in voting, and prohibits states from using any voter qualification system that results in a denial of the right to vote on account of race or color. EJS encourages the en banc panel to uphold the panel’s decision and strike down Washington’s racially discriminatory law.
The law firm Cooley LLP provided assistance on the brief.
We Have an Opening for a Communications Associate
The Equal Justice Society is seeking a communications generalist with strong writing, event management and online social media skills for a short-term contract position compensated at $10,000 for a minimum of three months. (Share this on Facebook and Twitter.)
EJS is a national strategy group heightening consciousness on race in the law and popular discourse. Using a three-pronged strategy of law and public policy advocacy, cross-disciplinary convenings and strategic public communications, EJS seeks to restore race equity issues to the national consciousness, build effective progressive alliances, and advance the discourse on the positive role of government.
The Communications Associate contractor will be responsible primarily for:
- Assisting with a national communications convening in late June 2010;
- Conceiving and generating content for our website and social media channels;
- Developing HTML emails for our email subscribers; and
- Writing drafts of backgrounders, media releases, op-eds and other outreach materials.
Other responsibilities may include:
- Helping execute EJS’s communications message, strategy, and program, and recommending and driving communication priorities and action;
- Supporting our media relations, including conceiving and developing story concepts; drafting releases, articles and opinion pieces; expanding media contacts; supporting press events and spokespersons, and monitoring media coverage and effectiveness;
- Researching media coverage and issues related to race, media and popular culture, and issues related to EJS’s law and public policy initiatives; and
- Improving internal tools for communications management.
Qualities expected of all EJS staff and consultants include integrity, high professional standards, and commitment to progressive social change, to our mission, and to working successfully with diverse colleagues, clients and collaborators. Cooperation, candor, flexibility, resilience, optimism, curiosity and sense of humor are valued. The successful candidate will likely bring:
- Two or more years of relevant responsibility in communications, online media, community education and outreach, policy and/or media work;
- Excellent written and oral communication, including ability to master complex issues and convey information clearly for varied audiences;
- Excellent organizational skills and the ability to manage multiple priorities and projects, to work well in teams, and to handle deadlines and changing priorities;
- Event management experience, specifically with developing convenings or conferences focusing on strategic content, process assessment and coalition building;
- Intermediate or better knowledge and use of social media, including Facebook and Twitter;
- Knowledge of the legal and legislative sectors, education and economic justice issues, development and/or advocacy coalition work;
- Basic knowledge of HTML; and
- Experience editing and manipulating digital media.
To apply, email EJS Director of Communications Keith Kamisugi introducing yourself and how you fit the criteria for the contract position, along with links to your blog, LinkedIn profile and/or Twitter profile. Email to kkamisugi@equaljusticesociety.org by Friday, April 16, 2010. Please do not send resumes or other attachments, and no phone calls.
Download a PDF of this announcement at http://www.box.net/shared/b5djhsacb1.
Reggie Shuford to Join EJS as Director of Law and Policy
After an extensive search process, the Equal Justice Society today announced that we’ve hired Reggie Shuford as our new Director of Law and Policy. He’ll be joining us in mid-May.
EJS has long wanted to engage in the next level of overturning the Intent Doctrine. Finding just the right Director of Law and Policy was critical to achieving this goal. And Reggie is the perfect fit.
Reggie is currently a senior staff counsel in the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation’s Racial Justice Program. An attorney with the ACLU since 1995, he helped pioneer legal challenges to racial profiling practices nationwide and is the ACLU’s chief litigator in challenges to racial profiling, leading national litigation efforts and consulting with ACLU state affiliates and others in cases of “driving while black or brown,” airport profiling, and profiling related to the war on terror.
Shuford’s advocacy to promote affirmative action includes leading recent efforts in Missouri and Oklahoma to defeat anti-affirmative action ballot initiatives, similar to California’s Prop. 209. Those initiatives were also sponsored by Ward Connerly and his supporters.
His docket has also included cases involving educational adequacy and equity, the school to prison pipeline, and the right to counsel for indigents. He also has been involved in advocacy against racism in the use of the death penalty.
Since September 11, 2001, working with colleagues around the country, he has filed a half dozen landmark lawsuits against major airlines alleging racial discrimination, as well as a nationwide challenge to the Transportation Security Administration’s management of the No-Fly List.
He has authored numerous petitions and briefs for cases that were presented to the U.S. Supreme Court dealing with matters of discrimination, the Equal Protection Clause and First and Fourth Amendment rights. He has published articles related to racial profiling, affirmative action, and violence in the African American community.
Reggie also teaches and speaks regularly around the country and internationally, including Moscow, Geneva, and Canada, on issues of racial justice, profiling, discrimination, national security, and other topics, and has appeared on numerous television programs, including CNN’s Burden of Proof and Talk Back Live, ABC’s 20/20, Court TV’s Pros and Cons and Crier Today, NBC’s Nightly News and Dateline, an MTV documentary, True Life: I Am Driving While Black, and was featured in Leading the Way: The History of Black Lawyers and Judges in America Throughout the Twentieth Century, on Court TV.
He has been interviewed on various radio and TV programs, including National Public Radio and MSNBC, and has been quoted in major newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and the Guardian. In addition to his litigation responsibilities, Shuford is the ACLU’s Recruitment and Retention Officer for attorneys of color on the national legal staff.
Prior to the ACLU, Reggie worked in private practice in Raleigh, N.C., with the firm Richard Schwartz & Associates, specializing in education law. Just after graduating law school, he clerked with the Hon. Henry E. Frye of the Supreme Court of North Carolina. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Law, in Chapel Hill, where he was his graduating class president. He is a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School for the 2009-10 academic year and the recent recipient of the University of North Carolina School of Law’s Distinguished Alumnus Award.
We’re elated that Reggie’s joining the EJS team and hope that you have a chance to meet him (or see him again) after he joins us in mid-May.
LDF: ‘King’s Legacy Serve as a Call to Arms on Crisis in Haiti’
Got this today from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund:
Today provides a moment for reflection on the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – born 81 years ago on this day. It is also a moment of intense anguish for the survivors and those continuing to suffer in the wake of the tragic earthquake in Haiti.
Throughout his life, Dr. King was committed to achieving equality, addressing discrimination and resolving poverty. These were goals that he set out to achieve both domestically and abroad. In a December 11, 1964 Nobel Lecture speech, Dr. King observed that:
Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation; no individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for the least of these. In the final analysis, the rich must not ignore the poor, because both rich and poor are tied together in a single garment of destiny-for life is interrelated and all men are interdependent. The agony of the poor diminishes the rich, and the salvation of the poor enlarges the rich.
Given the searing experience of Hurricane Katrina, it’s hauntingly disturbing to now witness the intensifying humanitarian crisis unfolding in Haiti. We have a responsibility and a duty to do all that we can to alleviate the suffering unfolding in this weak and vulnerable nation. Before the earthquake, Haiti remained one of the least-developed countries in the Americas with a literacy rate of just 53 percent and nearly 80 percent of the population living in poverty. These numbers are likely to worsen given the total collapse of the country’s infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and government buildings. A long road of rebuilding and recovery lies ahead.
The speed with which we mobilized an aid package to help bailout corporations in the midst of our national economic crisis should shape and inform the relief we now provide to Haiti. Our neighbors in Haiti, just 600 miles from the shore of southern Florida desperately need immediate relief and meaningful intervention. Our own recent experience from Hurricane Katrina should serve as a call to arms and propel us to deploy every resource necessary to bring immediate relief and aid to those suffering in Haiti. Dr. King would have certainly compelled as much.
For more information on how you can provide assistance: The Center for International Disaster Information (CIDI) has links to various lists of organizations that are responding to the earthquake or Global Giving has specific disaster-recovery projects listed that can be supported.
Informational Forums on California Citizens Redistricting Commission
On Jan. 25 in San Francisco and Jan. 26 in Sacramento, learn how you can apply to serve on the commission and ensure the commission reflects the diversity of our state at forums sponsored by MALDEF, EJS, CaCCR, APALC and NAACP California.
In 2008, California voters passed Proposition 11, creating California’s first-ever citizens redistricting commission. The 14-member commission is responsible for drawing the state Senate, Assembly and Board of Equalization districts. The legislative lines drawn by the commission will determine political representation in California for the next decade.
Online applications are due on February 12, 2010. Please join us to discuss the role of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission and how to apply to serve on it. For more information, visit http://WeDrawTheLines.ca.gov or http://RedistrictingCA.org.
Here’s details of the forums in San Francisco and Sacramento:
SAN FRANCISCO
Monday, January 25, 2010
5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Bingham McCutchen LLP
3 Embarcadero Center Promenade, 28th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94111
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=253282782559
Panelists include:
Thomas A. Saenz, President & General Counsel, MALDEF
Janis Hirohama, President, League of Women Voters of California
Nancy Ramirez, Western Regional Counsel, MALDEF
Sharon Reilly, Chief Legal Counsel, California Bureau of State Audits
Eva Paterson, President, Equal Justice Society (Moderator)
SACRAMENTO
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Auditorium
1500 Capitol Mall
Sacramento, CA 95814
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=409474785243
Panelists include:
Thomas A. Saenz, President & General Counsel, MALDEF
Elaine Howle, California State Auditor
Nancy Ramirez, Western Regional Counsel, MALDEF
Trudy Schafer, Senior Program Director, League of Women Voters of CA
Samuel E. Walton, Redistricting Consultant, California NAACP (Moderator)
For more information, please contact Nancy Ramirez at 213-629-2512 x121 or at nramirez@maldef.org.
Space is limited. Please confirm your attendance for these events to Martin Muñoz at 213-629-2512 x143 or at mmunoz@maldef.org by Friday, January 22, 2010.
Court Rules Defunding of ACORN Unconstitutional
EJS has throughout the fall joined many other organizations in supporting ACORN against attacks from the Right and also supported the lawsuit challenging Congress’s unconstitutional defunding of the organization. The court agreed.
On December 11, 2009, the Honorable Nina Gershon, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York, granted a preliminary injunction to stop Congress from singling out a single organization for punishment without proper investigation or due process.
On November 12, 2009, ACORN, represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a case challenging Congress’s unconstitutional defunding of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The case charges Congress with violating the Bill of Attainder provision in the U.S. Constitution, violating the Fifth Amendment right to due process, and infringing on the First Amendment right to freedom of association by targeting affiliated and allied organizations, as well.
CCR attorneys say members of Congress violated the Constitution by declaring an organization guilty of a crime and punishing it and its members without benefit of a trial.
ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis said: “Today’s ruling is a victory for the Constitutional rights for all Americans and for the citizens who work through ACORN to improve their communities and promote responsible lending and homeownership.”