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1 MoProBono Spring 2018 MOPROBONO Spring 2018 Update
1MoProBono Spring 2018
MOPROBONOSpring 2018 Update
2 MoProBono Spring 2018
INSIDE
3 MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR
4 VERBATIM
6 WHO DOES IT
7 REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
8 PRO BONO NEWS BRIEFS
9 ENFORCING THE MOTOR VOTER ACT IN CALIFORNIA
10 IMMIGRATION ASSISTANCE
12 FANTASTIC. MYSTERIOUS. BORDERLINE IMPLAUSIBLE.
13 THIS IS PERSONAL MORRISON & FOERSTER PRO BONO REPORT
14 RESPONDING TO NATURAL DISASTERS IN CALIFORNIA
15 GUN VIOLENCE
16 LITERACY RIGHTS IN CALIFORNIA
17 KATHI PUGH AWARD
18 ADVANCING THE OBJECTIVES OF NONPROFITS AND SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS
21 PRO BONO HONORS, AWARDS, AND RECOGNITION
22 UNWAVERING COMMITMENT TO PRO BONO
23 ON THE HORIZON
23 GET INVOLVED
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MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRA “story . . . of intrigue and mystery” is how the presiding judge described one of the most unique and complex pro bono asylum cases that our attorneys have ever tackled.
MoFo’s client, a Mexican national, traveled to Iran under the pretext of learning about Islam; however, his real intention was to investigate and record any evidence of Iranian cyberwarfare capabilities. Although he found no such evidence, he did discover terrorist-run religious schools designed to indoctrinate Latin American youth with anti-American sentiment.
Our San Diego team won a hard-fought victory in the case in favor of our client, who fled Iran back to Mexico shortly after his spying equipment was discovered. The team used expert testimony to corroborate many of our client’s extraordinary claims, and won him asylum in the United States after harassment and threats of Iranian prosecution by Iranian agents in Mexico, including the former Iranian ambassador to Mexico.
It is our attorneys’ willingness to take on even the most unusual and complex pro bono cases, such as the one described here, that underscores our values as a firm, as well as our commitment to pro bono.
In this issue of MoProBono, you will hear more about this extraordinary case, as well as many other inspiring matters that our lawyers have taken on. Whether fighting for literacy rights on behalf of underserved students in California, or overhauling unreasonable “hot check” practices in Arkansas, our lawyers are dedicating their time to pro bono in pursuit of a better society.
Larren
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New York of counsel Jayson Cohen is passionate about fighting injustice. During law school, he developed the desire to give a voice to underrepresented members of the community. Recently, he reignited this passion by serving as a member of a Morrison & Foerster pro bono team that achieved stunning success in reforming and completely overhauling unreasonable “hot check” court practices in Arkansas. “Hot checks” are those returned for insufficient funds.
“While in law school I became very interested in 14th Amendment due process and equal protection issues,” Jayson explained. “As a patent litigator, however, I’m very much engaged with commercial clients, so for the first few years of practice at Morrison & Foerster, I was not as involved in pro bono as I’d liked to have been.
“But starting in 2016, I had more time and decided I wanted to get more involved. So I spoke with Morrison & Foerster senior pro bono counsel Jennifer Brown about how I could do so. Initially I worked on a couple of pro bono matters, and when the
Arkansas hot check case came up, I stepped in to join a team co-led by Morrison & Foerster partner Alex Lawrence and then-partner Chet Kerr, with associates Joe Sulzbach, Erica Richards, Andrew Kissner, Rob Baehr, and senior paralegal Susan Tice. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Arkansas ACLU served as co-counsel.”
Morrison & Foerster’s suit, filed in August 2016 in federal court in Little Rock, detailed how the Sherwood, Arkansas hot check division of the local district court trapped poor people who bounced a check in a quagmire of ever-mounting fees and costs, sending many to what amounted to debtors’ prison for being unable to pay.
“As a member of the team I helped analyze legal issues and facts surrounding the case and drafted parts of the complaint,” said Jayson. “I also went to Arkansas to investigate, where I visited the prison where hot check case defendants were jailed. The case was a challenging one and fought primarily on procedural grounds. I was fortunate to argue
against the motion to dismiss before the federal court. In the end we got a good settlement that institutionalized constitutional procedures, including a complete overhaul of the court’s practices. It was as good an outcome as if we’d litigated it.
“This case has affected thousands of poor people who now no longer face the threat of lifelong debt and jail time because they made the mistake of passing a bad check. It’s a true victory for equal justice under the law. While our case lit a fire in Arkansas, it’s just one piece of the puzzle. Hopefully it will spread to other jurisdictions.
“Overall, my work on the Arkansas hot check case and other Morrison & Foerster pro bono cases has provided me with the ability to not just talk the talk but walk the walk. Not only have I been able to use my strategic litigation knowledge; this is also an opportunity to help make change I believe in. I’m looking forward to continuing my involvement in Morrison & Foerster’s pro bono efforts in the future.”
VERBATIM
“This case has affected thousands of poor people who now no longer face the threat of lifelong debt and jail time because they made the mistake of passing a bad check. It’s a true victory for equal justice under the law.”
JAYSON COHEN
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San Francisco Business Restructuring & Insolvency senior counsel Adam Lewis recently obtained a life-changing win for a pro bono client referred by California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA).
The client had been working as an all-around hand at a now-bankrupt Central Valley dairy for more than 15 years. During his tenure at the dairy, he often worked long hours, sometimes seven days a week, and other times up to 13 hours per day. In spite of this, he was only
paid $1,700 a month throughout his employment. He was not paid overtime or for extra days worked, in violation of California law.
Unfortunately, according to Adam, the dairy used its leverage arising from the client’s need for employment to support himself and his family to try to cheat the client out of more than $50,000. Adam explained that this tactic is frequently used by agricultural employers to avoid paying employees the wages they are owed under California law.
The case had been referred to bankruptcy court by the California Labor Commissioner, before whom CRLA had initiated a claim proceeding. In the bankruptcy case, Adam, helped by a CRLA lawyer and Adam’s assistant Margaret McIlhargie, obtained a judgment for the client for the full amount owed. The claim was then fully paid by the dairy. The client was thrilled with the outcome.
The dairy used its leverage arising from the client’s need for employment to support himself and his family to try to cheat the client out of more than $50,000.
WHO DOES IT
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Our legal teams continue to lead the charge for women’s reproductive rights and contraceptive access, standing at the forefront of this landscape to ensure all women can exercise their constitutional right to make their own childbearing decisions without government interference or coercion.
Representing the American Association of University Women, several unions that represent health care workers, and other parties, we filed amicus briefs in the district
courts of Pennsylvania and California to object to newly proposed federal rules that would have allowed employers and colleges to assert religious or moral objections to providing no-cost contraceptive coverage to employees and students. In rejecting the rules, these courts cited our briefs to demonstrate how many hundreds of thousands of women could lose access to contraceptives that are instrumental to women’s ability to participate fully in education and the economy. Jamie Levitt, Janie Schulman,
Rhiannon Batchelder, and Andrea Kozak-Oxnard prepared the briefs.
Led by New York’s J. Alexander Lawrence, MoFo’s legal teams also joined forces with the Center for Reproductive Rights to block restrictions affecting the availability of and access to abortion in Texas. We won injunctions against a regulation that would have required the burial or cremation of fetal tissue after abortion and a statute that would have severely burdened access to second-trimester abortion.
REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
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PRO BONO NEWS BRIEFSMoFo lawyers continue to represent individuals in need of legal aid and counsel. Here are a few of the many cases that our lawyers have handled in recent months.
TAX ABATEMENTA Los Angeles-based volunteer chaplain working with homeless people in the city sought assistance in challenging $7,500 in taxes that had been wrongfully assessed by the California Franchise Tax Board. Tax lawyers Clara Lim in Los Angeles and Tom Humphreys in New York won a tax abatement for our client, who praised MoFo for being the only firm out of the dozen he contacted to respond to his request for help.
MEDICAL ERRORSOur Los Angeles team responded to a local court’s call to assist a veteran who had suffered lasting physical and mental health damage stemming from medical errors made by the VA. Lawyers Dave Walsh, Bita Rahebi, and Matt Cave won a settlement of $92,000, enough to vastly improve the client’s medical care and social support in the years ahead.
HOLOCAUST REPARATIONSIn Berlin, our team represented a Holocaust survivor’s widow who was seeking benefits from a German government program. (The survivor himself had died while a German court’s request for evidence of his persecution was pending.) Berlin lawyers Julia Schwalm, Jannis Werner, Andrea Dicke, Jakob Schellmann, and Felix Helmstädter used history to demonstrate the circumstances and duration of his persecution, convincing the court to grant his widow the maximum benefit. This case is one of several similar matters we have undertaken in Berlin through a referral program by the U.S.-based nonprofit Bet Tzedek.
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MoFo continues to advance the right to vote in cases brought under the National Voter Registration Act (the “Motor Voter” law). The law’s straightforward requirements that state and local governments facilitate voter registration when citizens apply for a driver’s license or for public benefits are often ignored. In January 2018, the firm settled a case it had brought under the Motor Voter law, reaching an agreement that will allow the million-plus Californians who renew their driver’s license or state identification by mail each year to easily register to vote or update their registration. The case began in 2015 with a pre-suit letter that led to significant administrative and legislative improvements. License renewals, however, were addressed only after MoFo filed suit in 2017. MoFo partner Michael Jacobs served as lead counsel for the case, along with co-counsel from Demos, the ACLU Voting Rights Project, and the ACLU Foundation of Northern California.
ENFORCING THE MOTOR VOTER ACT IN CALIFORNIA
In January 2018, the firm settled a case it had brought under the Motor Voter law, reaching an agreement that will allow the million-plus Californians who renew their driver’s license or state identification by mail each year to easily register to vote or update their registration.
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The new administration has introduced numerous proposals and issued several executive orders that would significantly alter federal immigration policy. Our lawyers have responded with vigor to these proposed changes, staffing clinics to help people apply for legal status, preparing amicus briefs, and continuing to seek asylum for people threatened by persecution in their home countries. Our work in this area is wide and deep and addresses many of the most pressing (and unique) aspects of the current immigration conversation, including the “travel ban,” sanctuary cities, and asylum seekers. Here are some highlights.
• Between February 2017 and March 2018, our teams filed eight amicus briefs in federal district courts, circuit courts of appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court representing dozens of religious
and interreligious organizations opposing successive versions of the January 2017 travel ban that sought to bar refugees from around the world, as well as immigrants from a number of predominantly Muslim nations, from entering the United States. These briefs expressed the religious groups’ deep concerns about the refugee ban, based on their work with refugees and the universal commands central to all of their faiths requiring a welcome to the stranger and assistance to those in need. The briefs also raised the ban’s harm to religious freedom. Several courts have ruled that such a ban embodies religious discrimination and undermines the principle that the government must not favor or disfavor any religion. The Supreme Court is
now considering a challenge to the travel ban. Marc Hearron, Joe Palmore, and Sophia Brill in the Appellate Group led the effort, along with Purvi Patel in Los Angeles; Sandeep Nandivada in Washington, D.C.; and Amanda Aikman and senior pro bono counsel Jennifer Brown in New York.
• California lawyers represented a number of religious entities with amicus briefs to California federal courts opposing the threatened cut-off of funding to “sanctuary cities” — the loosely defined term applied to jurisdictions that limit the involvement of local law enforcement officials in implementing federal immigration law. The briefs demonstrated amici’s first-
IMMIGRATION ASSISTANCE
Our work in [immigration assistance] is wide and deep and addresses many of the most pressing (and unique) aspects of the current immigration conversation, including the travel ban, sanctuary cities, and asylum seekers.
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hand knowledge of how a federal funding cut-off would make immigrant communities more vulnerable to danger and deprivation and interfere with amici’s religious missions to help those in need. Partners Jennifer Taylor and Bill Tarantino led the efforts, with of counsel Robin Stafford and associates Amanda Phillips, Rylee Olm, and Justin Fisch contributing. As with the travel ban, litigation on the sanctuary cities order continues.
Finally, our lawyers working in the area of political and religious asylum continue to win legal victories for individuals who fled to the United States to escape persecution in their home countries.
• A team of Northern Virginia lawyers that included Cynthia Akatugba and Stephen Thau won asylum for their client, who as a teen in El Salvador had been forced to live with a gang leader, suffering multiple rapes and other abuses, while she and her family were silenced by the threat of murder.
• New York teams won asylum in two cases for women who fled brutal domestic violence by their partners in Guatemala and Haiti, in both cases prevailing after hearings in immigration court. Jamie Levitt guided the efforts, with associates Kat Mateo and Don Lee playing
leading roles, assisted by paralegal Ruby Grossman.
• Palo Alto lawyers succeeded in getting asylum for a lesbian from Cameroon, one of the world’s most repressive countries for LGBTQ people, who would have faced jail and worse if she were forced to return to that country. The team, led by Chuck Comey with associates Shannon Sibold and Hila Cohen and pro bono counsel Rachel Williams, is now on the verge of bringing their client’s two young children — a four-year-old son and a baby she informally adopted at birth — to join her in the United States.
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Our team in San Diego won a hard-fought victory in one of the most unusual and complex asylum cases we have ever taken on. The presiding judge described it as a “mysterious” and “extraordinary” story of “questionable . . . plausibility,” yet found it credible after hearing corroborating expert testimony.
Our client, a Mexican national, traveled to Iran under the pretext of learning about Islam, but his
more earnest goal was to investigate and record evidence of Iranian cyberwarfare capabilities. Although he found no such evidence, he serendipitously discovered terrorist-run religious schools designed to indoctrinate Latin American youth with anti-American sentiment.
While he escaped Iran shortly after authorities discovered his spying equipment, Iranian agents, including the former Iranian ambassador to
Mexico, harassed him on his return to Mexico with threats of Iranian prosecution. The Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and other law enforcement agencies vetted his claim extensively for a period of six years before his case reached immigration court. Ultimately, he prevailed, as our team persuaded the judge to grant our client asylum. Associates Christian Andreu-von Euw and Samuel Cortina led the case, with assistance from senior paralegal Lisa Shunkwiler.
FANTASTIC. MYSTERIOUS. BORDERLINE IMPLAUSIBLE.
[Our client] serendipitously discovered terrorist-run religious schools designed to indoctrinate Latin American youth with anti-American sentiment.
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[Our client] serendipitously discovered terrorist-run religious schools designed to indoctrinate Latin American youth with anti-American sentiment.
THIS IS PERSONAL MORRISON & FOERSTER PRO BONO REPORT
We used the occasion of Celebrate Pro Bono Week in October 2017 to launch the
release of This Is Personal: Pro Bono Report. This Is Personal, a comprehensive
review of our pro bono work across numerous categories, features in-depth
stories of pro bono matters from the perspective of our lawyers, who bring their
passion and commitment to this important work every day.
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RESPONDING TO NATURAL DISASTERS IN CALIFORNIANatural disasters remain a persistent threat in California. When these disasters strike, they rapidly upend thousands of lives and dozens of communities, with those affected facing uncertain futures as they cope with the damage and destruction that their homes and businesses have sustained. These communities and the agencies that serve them desperately need legal information
and guidance as they begin to chart a path forward and put the pieces of their lives back together.
Driven by the desire to get help into the hands of those affected by these disasters as quickly as possible, pro bono counsel Rachel Williams and Dorothy Fernandez, along with partners Robert Falk,
David Walsh, and dozens of other MoFo lawyers and staff, mobilized to develop the Northern California Wildfires Helping Handbook and the Southern California Disasters Helping Handbook. The handbooks include a compilation of basic legal information and general resources to help individuals and small businesses in the affected communities recover.
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An ordinary school day in Parkland, Florida. A country music concert in Las Vegas, Nevada. A Saturday evening of dancing at The Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. A Sunday service at a small Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. A mid-December morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. These names, places, and events have unfortunately become synonymous with some of America’s most deadly and horrifying mass shootings. As the country copes with the aftermath of these seemingly endless gun violence tragedies, our own lawyers are taking bold steps to support efforts to limit the damage from gun violence in our society.
Morrison & Foerster, along with several other leading law firms, has joined the Firearms Accountability Counsel Taskforce (FACT) to work collaboratively with the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the
Brady Center, and the nation’s other premier gun violence prevention organizations to reduce the scourge and impact of gun violence. In particular, our teams have recently filed amicus briefs in cases addressing issues that the Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs shootings have raised, focusing specifically on high-capacity ammunition magazines (defined as those containing more than 10 bullets) and bans on firearms for convicted domestic violence offenders.
A bicoastal team of lawyers featuring Jamie Levitt and Meghan Dwyer in New York and James McGuire and Elizabeth Patterson in California filed an amicus brief on behalf of Equality California and other LGBTQ rights groups in support of a California law banning possession of high-capacity ammunition magazines. The possession ban reinforces a ban passed in 2000 on
sales of such magazines. The ban’s intent is to limit the lethality of mass shootings by forcing a shooter to pause to reload after every 10 shots, giving potential victims a chance to escape. This decision is pending.
A team of lawyers from our San Francisco and San Diego offices represented the Giffords Law Center in an amicus brief to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. It sought affirmation of an earlier decision that dismissed a Second Amendment challenge brought by a man who was barred by a 1997 domestic violence conviction from ever buying firearms. On January 4, the court upheld the conviction, ruling that the federal law imposing the firearms ban did not violate the Second Amendment. James McGuire again led the effort, with associates Samuel Cortina and departed associate Joanna Simon.
GUN VIOLENCE
As the country copes with the aftermath of these seemingly endless gun violence tragedies, our own lawyers are taking bold steps to support efforts to limit the damage from gun violence in our society.
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LITERACY RIGHTS IN CALIFORNIAMoFo continues its long tradition of advocacy for educational equity in California with Ella T. v. State of California, a landmark education case brought under the California Constitution that seeks to vindicate the right of all students to gain literacy.
Filed in Los Angeles by Public Counsel and MoFo attorneys on behalf of students from three different schools, as well as advocacy organizations CADRE and Fathers & Families of San Joaquin, the case
demands that the State of California ensure all California students receive evidence-based literacy instruction at the elementary and secondary level, in the conditions necessary to support teaching and learning. The lawsuit claims the State has violated the fundamental right to education of these children, who are mostly low-income and students of color, by depriving them of access to the most fundamental educational building block: literacy.
MoFo partner Michael Jacobs, who leads MoFo’s Ella T. v. State of California team of attorneys, said of the case, which is still pending, “The data on literacy in California is so overwhelming and disheartening. We believe a focused, disciplined effort to solve the problem could yield concrete improvements. California and its local governments need to do their job to ensure literacy is achieved for all students. The State has a constitutional and moral duty to teach all children to read and write. We intend for this lawsuit to push toward that goal.”
“The data on literacy in California is so overwhelming and disheartening. We believe a focused, disciplined effort to solve the problem could yield concrete improvements. California and its local governments need to do their job to ensure literacy is achieved for all students.”
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San Diego associate Christian Andreu-von Euw received the 2017 Kathi Pugh Award for Pro Bono Service, an honor recognizing his representation of pro bono clients with distinction across a range of legal disciplines, including immigration, housing, criminal defense, and domestic violence. Since joining the firm in 2009, Christian has tirelessly contributed to the firm’s pro bono program, dedicating
an average of 200 hours each year. Christian is shown, below, with Kathi Pugh and receiving the award from San Diego partner Mark Zebrowski.
The award, established in 2013 and named for retired pro bono counsel Kathi Pugh, recognizes the legacy that Kathi established in her 20-year role as the head of the firm’s pro bono program. It celebrates the values, enthusiasm, and compassion that
she brought to MoFo. As the award winner, Christian directed a $10,000 donation to the Crawford High School Academy of Law Foundation, a nonprofit organization that enhances access to justice; Christian serves there as a board member and active volunteer. MoFo and The Morrison & Foerster Foundation jointly funded this donation.
RECOGNIZING OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTIONS TO PRO BONO:
KATHI PUGH AWARD
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Our legal teams around the globe continue to represent a wide variety of nonprofits and social entrepreneurs, helping these trailblazers navigate the complex landscape in which they operate and enabling them to expand the reach of their important missions.
Underscoring our commitment to cross-office and cross-discipline collaboration, a diverse team of tax and finance lawyers are working with The Nature Conservancy as it sets up a “water fund” to preserve water flow in the Yakima River. This complex project is intended to use capital invested by social impact investors to acquire water rights in the headwaters of the Yakima River in Washington State. San Diego partner Shane Shelley, Denver counsel Kelley Howes, Los Angeles associate Clara Lim, and San Francisco associates Jessica Stern and Allison Peck are leading the matter.
Meanwhile, San Francisco partner Susan Mac Cormac, working with Northern Virginia senior associate Jessica Bissey, designed and launched a legal advisory group for Echoing Green. The advisory group is composed of 25 lawyers from academia and private practice
with expertise in social enterprise and impact investing. This group provides legal advice to Echoing Green Fellows, a select group of social entrepreneurs engaged in creating new enterprises around the world.
In California, the state in which our firm was founded, a legal team recently negotiated an agreement for Starlight Children’s Foundation that brings critically ill and hospitalized children unique, immersive virtual reality experiences based on Star Wars. Los Angeles partners Henry Fields and former San Francisco partner Sara Terheggen, along with Palo Alto associates Emiko Kurotsu and Hila Cohen, led that matter.
Our pro bono work remains global and without borders. In China, a team of lawyers from our Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong offices collaborated to help the U.S.-based nonprofit Pacific Environment register an office in China under the new requirements imposed by China’s recently enacted Overseas NGO Management Law, a law that has created considerable uncertainty for international NGOs operating in China. Beijing partner Sherry Yin led the firm’s first project under this new law, with support from Beijing
associate Hao Zhang, Shanghai senior consultant Liwen Zhang, and Hong Kong associate Gary Zeng.
Meanwhile, in Japan, a Tokyo-based team composed of partners Mitsutoshi Uchida and Kenji Hosokawa, and associates Naoyuki Fukuda and Yuhki Asano, is providing structuring and related advice to General Incorporated Association C4 to develop a social impact bond market in Japan. Its purpose is to connect interested investors with NGOs and social entrepreneurs that are tackling social challenges such as regional poverty, the rights of immigrants, and the lack of support for aging communities.
Our London office remains very active in these dimensions of the pro bono landscape, representing numerous and diverse interests within the nonprofit and social entrepreneur space. Senior counsel Howard Morris led a professional development workshop for more than 70 lawyers sponsored by the East Africa Law Society and Advocates for International Development in Kigali, Rwanda. The workshop focused on the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human
ADVANCING THE OBJECTIVES OF NONPROFITS AND SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS
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Rights, a set of recommendations elucidating international standards on businesses’ responsibility to respect human rights and to mitigate corporate-related human rights harm within East Africa’s fast-growing economies. Corporate partners Oliver Rochman, associate Kritika Mohan, employment of counsel Annabel
Gillham, and finance trainee solicitor Hannah Brellisford advised Emerge Poverty Free on its partnership with another UK charity, Send a Cow. Emerge Poverty Free works with partner organizations in East Africa to help people gain the tools, skills, and knowledge they need to lift themselves out of poverty.
Finally, in our nation’s capital, partners Sean Ruff and Obrea Poindexter are advising Kiva on its operations in the United States. Kiva began as a platform to promote lending by members of the public to small entrepreneurs in developing countries and is now expanding its operations to the United States.
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PRO BONO HONORS, AWARDS, AND RECOGNITION• The National Law Journal
named Morrison & Foerster to its 2018 Pro Bono Hot List, recognizing the firm’s success after a years-long struggle to win information and medical treatment for veterans who were subjected to secret tests of toxins and psychological agents during their service. The award also mentioned the debtors’ prison case covered on p. 4.
• Morrison & Foerster received the 2018 Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation Award for excellent service. The Foundation is a clearinghouse for pro bono legal projects that strengthen the global social entrepreneurship movement and improve the lives of the world’s poor and disenfranchised.
• The American Lawyer named Morrison & Foerster the winner of its 2017 Global Legal Awards Grand Prize in Citizenship for our work addressing the European refugee crisis. Lawyers in the firm’s Berlin office devoted more than 1,200 hours to refugee assistance in 2016.
• The Financial Times named San Francisco partner Derek Foran to its 2017 North America Innovative Lawyers list in the
Rule of Law and Access to Justice category, citing his success in holding the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion organization, accountable for harassing and interfering with the constitutional rights of doctors and women.
• Justice in Aging gave San Francisco litigator Will Stern and his colleagues an award for their successful class action on behalf of 7,000 people whose disability benefits were denied or cut off after the government fired the doctor who had conducted their medical evaluations. The affected individuals now have the opportunity to prove their continued need for benefits through new medical exams.
• San Francisco Energy + Environment lawyer Corinne Quigley received an award for her pro bono legal services to nonprofit affordable housing developer NeighborWorks Home Ownership Center.
• Housing Works California presented Morrison & Foerster with its Tom McGuiness Community Leadership Award for our work in Housing Works v. County of Los Angeles, a matter in which the firm, together with
several legal services groups, represented people with mental disabilities to secure better access to public benefits for them in Los Angeles County.
• Adam Hunt received the New York State Bar Association President’s Pro Bono Service Award for his outstanding pro bono contributions to vulnerable New Yorkers. The award recognizes Adam’s role in several pro bono matters, including impact litigation to reform solitary confinement; rein in unwarranted surveillance of religious and political groups; and increase payments to meet the needs of children in foster care.
• Legal Services of the Hudson Valley gave Morrison & Foerster its Access to Justice Award for our litigation advocacy on behalf of special education students in the Mount Vernon, New York school system.
• The San Francisco La Raza Lawyers Association honored pro bono counsel Dorothy Fernandez for her years of pro bono contributions to the community.
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UNWAVERING COMMITMENT TO PRO BONOMorrison & Foerster is a pro bono leader. The firm galvanized the 1991 gathering of law firm leaders that led to the Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge®, the bedrock of pro bono today. One of the first law firms to create a full-time pro bono counsel position, MoFo dedicates extraordinary resources
to helping attorneys contribute their best through pro bono work.
Lawyers in Morrison & Foerster offices worldwide live out this proud pro bono tradition every day. Our work runs the gamut, from class action representation that benefits
thousands to individual advocacy for people who otherwise would be shut out from access to justice. We staff legal service clinics and counsel hundreds of nonprofit organizations and social enterprises on legal needs ranging from corporate formation to patent claims.
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ON THE HORIZON
GETTING INVOLVED
Lawyers from MoFo’s San Diego office will be in court later this month to argue that government officials violated the rights of our clients, musician Brandon Duncan and student Aaron Harvey. Mr. Duncan and Mr. Harvey were arrested based on defective warrant applications that relied on constitutionally protected activities as the basis for arrest. They spent seven months in jail only to have all criminal charges against them dismissed.
Foster parents in Hawaii may soon be better able to provide for the children in their care as the result of a class action suit we filed as co-counsel with Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice. In late May, a federal court will decide whether to approve a settlement we reached, under which the state will substantially increase monthly maintenance payments as well as clothing allowances for foster children.
Pro bono client the Transformative Justice Coalition is co-sponsor of the National Commission for Voter Justice, which is holding a series of public hearings highlighting voting rights and focusing attention on problems with access to the polls. MoFo finance and litigation attorneys prepared a “briefing book” to provide commissioners key data on voting in Georgia in advance of a hearing there in March. Upcoming hearings are scheduled in California, Florida, and Wisconsin.
Jennifer K. BrownSenior Pro Bono Counsel
(for East Coast, China, Singapore)(212) 336-4094
Rachel P. WilliamsPro Bono Counsel
(for Northern California, Europe)(415) 268-6340
Dorothy L. FernandezPro Bono Counsel
(for Southern California, Denver, Tokyo) (415) 268-6009
Want to join your colleagues or suggest a pro bono project? Contact:
Want to know more about MoFo’s pro bono program? Visit the pro bono pages on the firm’s website.
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© 2018 Morrison & Foerster LLP
