On Thursday, June 27 Washington Council of Lawyers hosted the Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Panel, which covered the current work being done in this area and ways to get involved! The panel was moderated by Amandeep Sidu (co-founder of Sikh Coalition), this was a conversation amongst leaders of 4 public interest or nonprofit organizations regarding their backgrounds, their current work, the challenges in the current legal landscape and more. Antonio is currently at the Legal Defense Fund, however he took a nontraditional pathway to his work. He was a Biglaw associate at Morrison & Forrester, law clerk, Fulbright fellow and worked in Africa and then returned to the U.S. as a law clerk. His experiences with micro-aggressions at Yale University as well as race relations in the legal field led him to the Legal Defense Fund. He’s drawn to issues he’s impacted by. Maria Morris is at the National Prisons Project – ACLU. She did prison work at the Southern Poverty Law Center. She had been involved in human rights work prior to law school. Her passion is focusing on prisoners’ rights issues. There are disability and religious rights issues. Rewarding to do work on such gross human rights violations. Alena Sayo is at the National Disability Rights Network. She was previously a special education teacher. She was a Guardian Ad Litem. She believes that public service is who she is. Janson Wu recently joined the Trevor Project after being at GLAD. Challenges Currently Facing in Current Legal/Judicial Landscape: In prisons, challenges include opioid use disorder treatment, addressing mental health care and the administrative burden For the LBTQ community, the Supreme Court is now a risky place and there is a need to revert back to advocacy on the state level instead of litigating in the courts. However, almost half of the states now ban gender affirming care for youth so advocating on the state level is also challenging. The landscape for the Legal Defense Fund (educational equity, criminal justice, political participation, economic justice) has expanded to pro truth work involving attacks in higher education. There is an intersection between race and queer community. The disability rights movement was hand-in-hand with the civil rights movement. She talked about how it’s still legal in many states to be in sheltered workshops. Institutionalization is making a comeback particularly those who are unhoused. Intersectionality amongst identities is a recurring theme. The Victories Organizations are Seeing: People with disabilities scored a victory during Covid with access to services and government such as the right to vote independently and privately from home. The same system used by military and Americans abroad were provided to people with disabilities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts The LQBTQ community saw a victory recently in Rhode Island, which prevents harassment to providers of gender affirming care. In Pennsylvania, young people are now protected from conversion therapy via a recent Executive Order. In the prison reform arena, there was recently a case In Arizona in which it was determined that prisoners under 18 years old could not be in solitary confinement. People in long term solitary confinement dropped by 80%. All of the panelists suggested the following ways for new law school graduates to get involved: Fellowships Development of broad skillsets Policy-related work Be well-versed with outcomes Bar Association committees and getting involved by attending school board meetings. Future of civil rights movement will be in the public narrative.
