Latinojustice Prldef

Programs: Litigation:the litigation department engages in impact law reform litigation and advocacy to address systemic discriminatory policies and practices by both government - on the federal, state and local level, and/or private companies or entities that are adversely impacting the latino community at large. Latinojustice filed a common cause v. The nyc board of elections in the edny suing nyc for illegally purging purported inactive voters without undertaking the requisite notification steps required by federal voting rights law. We and our co-counsel at the lawyers' committee and dechert ljp obtained a preliminary restraining order requiring the city to permit any voter not on the voting rolls to vote by affidavit ballot. The u. S. Department of justice and the ny attorney general's office both subsequently intervened in the action, which recently settled with a consent decree. Our new associate counsel in the southeast office immediately played a central role coordinating our third annual "latinos and the criminal justice system" this two day convening on latinos and the criminal justice system followed prior conferences held at john jay college of criminal justice in nyc last year, and in washington, d. C. With the national hispanic leadership agenda in 2015. This critical strategy conversation brought latino/a leaders from around the country to discuss a wide range of criminal justice issues impacting latinx communities including crimmigration, mass incarceration, felon disenfranchisement & rights restoration, death penalty, and prisoner classification. Latinojustice was 1 of 4 organizations selected by equal justice works to host a florida immigration and community economic development fellowship project! This fellow will head our new central florida workplace justice project, which will provide legal advocacy and representation for low-wage latina workers in the hospitality industry who are encountering wage theft, discrimination, sexual harassment & other employment issues. In other criminal justice reform news, the independent commission on new york city criminal justice and incarceration reform formed in 2016 by nyc council speaker whose members included latinojustice president juan cartagena and interim brooklyn da and other advocates and formerly incarcerated individuals issued its report recommending the closure of the rikers island jail complex by instituting various reforms to reduce the jail population and establish five state-of-the-art borough-based jail facilities. In june, the court after a fairness hearing approved the proposed settlement in ligon v. The nyc police department, our class action challenging their stop & frisk practices. The settlement requires the nypd to implement a number of critical changes and reforms in their daily community policing practices. We worked with the nyclu, bronx defenders and shearman & sterling in this action. In centro de la communidad hispana v. Oyster bay, we received a favorable decision from the second circuit court of appeals this summer affirming a september 2015 decision that had struck down and permanently enjoined the town's ban on day laborers soliciting work on public roads and sidewalks. We partnered with the nyclu in this now eight year litigation. We hired a 2015 cuny school of law graduate and former ljp legal intern who started in april as our new long island latina/os at work (law) workplace justice project. We received a grant from the nys judiciary civil legal services fund last fall to provide expanded workers' rights legal assistance in long island focusing on low-wage immigrant workers in nassau county. Our work is based in our new long island satellite office housed at touro law school's public advocacy center (pac) in central islip. We conduct monthly spanish language know your rights legal clinics in hempstead with the workplace project and nycosh. Our law project has already filed a number of new employment complaints alleging racial and gender discrimination, sexual harassment, unpaid wages, and retaliatory firings with the equal employment opportunity commission, the national labor relations board, the ny state department of labor, and the ny attorney general's office. In january, we filed a warn act class action in the sdny v. An upper hudson valley employer that had recently laid off 200+ immigrant latino workers without notice which recently settled with the company paying substantial damages to a class of former workers. Responding to the ongoing attack on immigrant rights and voting rights, we have filed four new major lawsuits in the past several months. In partnership with the naacp legal defense & education fund and the mexican american legal defense & educational fund, we have filed action challenging the president's new election integrity commission as a sham entity created for the purpose to suppress and deter voters of color; with the lawyers' committee and dechert llp, we sued the nys board of elections over their illegal voter purge practices; with winston & strawn llp, we sued suffolk county, its sheriff, the u. S. Department of homeland security and immigration & customs enforcement over their practice of illegally detaining individuals beyond their scheduled release date based upon administrative agency detainer requests by ice in order to turn them over to the immigration authorities; and suing a long island school district for suspending latino unaccompanied minor students on suspicion of purported gang activity and affiliation without clearly setting forth the basis of the suspension. In yet another case, we and our co-counsel at nixon peabody filed a motion requesting a federal judge approve a u-visa certification for a client whom the fourth circuit had previously found was illegally detained and arrested by the fredrick county sheriff's office, and also accompanied the client to her immigration check-ins amid public reports of ice now detaining and deporting previously paroled immigrants. We also continue to file amicus briefs in the u. S. Supreme court and other federal and state courts across the country addressing voting rights, redistricting, employment, criminal justice and other critically important civil rights issues while presenting our nuanced perspective as a latino legal defense fund. We have partnered with pro bono lawyers at firms such as debevoise & plimpton, steptoe johnson, davis wright tremaine and others on these cases.

advocacy, community outreach and communications:the department of advocacy, community outreach and communications digital strategy continues to engage with various advocacy campaigns. Our 2017 communications and marketing efforts continue to expand our national digital footprint, as well as our presence in major newspapers, broadcast and other broadcast outlets. Digital mediapwf latinx cjr panel: on september 25th, we saw a massive spike in our reach and growth, likely attributed to the fact that this was the day that we had a panel with public welfare foundation focused on latinx and the criminal justice system. The facebook live from that day did not have a massive amount of reach (only roughly 3. 3k) and the engagement was likely driven by the cross promotional approach that we used leading up to the event. By creating promotional images and promotional gifs, we were able to drive traffic from twitter and instagram to engage with our facebook page. Justice for kern county: one of the campaigns where we engaged local leaders was the justice for kern county campaign. In this campaign, family and/or friends of victims of police brutality organized a rally to call out the police in kern county for police brutality and to hold them accountable. We turned out for that rally in person to help drive attention for this issue, on top of this we developed graphics highlighting the stories of police brutality from kern county that ran over the span of 10 days. We developed these graphics in collaboration with local families and they are continuing to use them in their ongoing campaigns. Communications and marketing:our communications and marketing efforts consisted of promoting our work on these four main issues: criminal justice reform (collaborative, google launch, narrative project, decriminalization, police reform), hurricane maria, the election and daca. We also had news coverage of our work in fighting the travel ban, voting purge and long island police reform. Our goals were to highlight our important litigation efforts, our community engagement activism and how our work has an important impact on many lives around the country. In addition, we want to strengthen a consistent message that emphasized latinojustice's important role in the national latino civil rights and criminal justice debate. We produced new banners, new collateral material for all of our departments, a new step and repeat, new brochures for law, human rights, frcc, projecto ayuda, economic justice and cj collaborative. And we've reduced our overall design and printing cost another 6%. Advocacy & community outreach:immigrant justice daca: we have engaged in a number of actions in new york as well as in dc to push for a clean dream act. We have focused particularly on daca actions on long island since there are a number of elected officials on long island who have great influence in the legislative process. Though the nhla we have also engaged in the dc policy conversations by joining statements highlighting why latinx' need a dream act to pass without preconditions. Justice reform collaborativethis past quarter we officially launched our justice reform collaborative. The collaborative focuses on developing policies and supporting meaningful criminal justice reform, raising latinx voices for criminal justice reform through documenting stories, empowering latinx leaders to act and influence criminal justice decisions and organizing latinx organizers to better engage in state level discussions. In the time since the launch we have pushed on moved forward on all those areas of focus. Meaningful criminal justice reform: we assisted with the development of policy papers focused on marijuana decriminalization, among other areas of focus, while also engaging directly with campaigns to shut down prisons and stop racial profiling. We also published various op-eds in spanish and english focused on rights restoration, the pardoning of sheriff arpaio and more. Raising latinx voice for criminal justice reform: one of our first major steps in the narrative building project; we documented and previewed the story of leyla martinez. Since then, we have gone on to document other stories which we will roll out in this coming year along with advocacy guides that will be developed by some of our community partners. Empowering latinx community to act: to better engage our community in criminal justice reform issues, we partnered with latinx organizations and criminal justice organizations to facilitate intersectional conversations and to map out ways we can take action. The bulk of this work so far has been a matter of turning up for our partners and supporting them in their ongoing criminal justice reform work and this next year we will look for ways that we can assist and deliver in crafting local campaigns in collaboration with our partners. Organizing latinx leaders: we have worked with many organizers on these issues for years, but few of them have really had the chance to organize with fellow latinx criminal justice reform advocates. By organizing the organizers, we are bringing advocates into a space where they can have vital conversations about what they see as the primary issues. So far in 2017 we have focused on organizing leaders in new york, new jersey, florida, california, texas and arizona. In this next year, we will strengthen those groups to engage in crucial state level criminal justice conversations while also developing similar networks in other states. Florida rights restoration: the right restoration campaign successfully collected 1. 1 million petitions and we are now waiting for the supervisor of elections to verify the petitions that have been turned in. As of right now 745k have been verify which means we need 26k more by february 1st, 2018. To help boost these numbers we put together town halls at university of central florida, rolling college, and the taft community center regarding the rights restoration campaign. Florida policy: we are also influencing policy discussions around criminal justice reform more directly by working through a state level criminal justice reform coalition. We are looking towards january 30th when we will travel to tallahassee to lobby around a range of issues such as bail reform and the creation of an adult citation program to allow local police to issue civil citations for misdemeanors. We continued to expand our collaboration with vamos4pr in orlando and around the country. Working with vamos4pr we have engaged in a number of local town halls to address specifically how orlando is responding to the crisis and providing resources for the surge of hurricane refugees who have arrived. Florida trust act: in december, we attended the orlando commission meeting to push for the city of orlando to pass immigration reform to protect all orlando citizens. Puerto ricohurricane maria: over the past couple of months, we joined many town halls and lobby days to help raise awareness about how puerto ricans, in the united states and on the island, are being impacted by inaction from the federal government. To further push for policy change on puerto rico, we have also traveled to dc and puerto rico to engage with elected officials and individuals impacted by the storms.

education:latino justice's cap leadership institute offers an array of comprehensive programs, which provide critical services for pre law students; our notable services include: the lsat prep courses which accommodated 56 prelaw students in our intensive spring and summer courses; latinojustice prldef's 34th annual law day hosted by new york law school, attracting from across the country over eighty-five law schools and hundreds of aspiring latino lawyers who participated in workshops, panel discussions and the biggest law fair in the northeast focused on recruiting students of diverse backgrounds; and the lawbound program offering an intensive one week preparation and mentoring program (in two separate sessions, winter and summer) to twenty six new scholars this year. Our success rate for the lb scholars who apply to law school is eighty-six percent. Lawbound alumni have graduated from many law schools including: benjamin cardozo law school, cuny law school, fordham law, harvard law school, new york law school, rutgers law school, st. John's law school, and stanford law school. This year, we also launched a brand new mentoring program next generation lideres (ngl) where 10 prelaw students (high school seniors - recent college grads) were matched up with members of our young professionals' board, the lideres. The ngl team mentor students, meeting with them at least one month and participating in ljp hosted events. Ngl also coordinates networking receptions, one in the spring and the fall and a winter panel discussion. They are engaged in the planning process, from creating invitations, inviting friends, scouting locations, and obtaining sponsors. They also sit on the various board committees assisting the organization with their development and cap leadership initiatives. We have also revamped our corporate legal internship program as the corporate/law firm alliance summer program, clasp. We've partnered with various fortune 500 corporate companies and top legal firms, collaborating in providing opportunities for law students of diversity, to gain a two-summer corporate law internship designed to pave the way to a corporate legal career.