For over 50 years, we have utilized impact litigation to fight for equity and civil rights. Our landmark cases like Chann v. Scott and the Korematsu Coram Nobis case led to significant civil rights victories. In 2023, thanks to our generous funders, we were able to support community members in a number of major lawsuits including those outlined below. We look forward to advancing these fights into 2024.
Asian Prisoner Support Committee v. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) challenges the CDCR policy of forwarding to ICE the names of all foreign born individuals entering custody, regardless of citizenship status or deportability. This case is currently in discovery. Additionally, our collection of documents to develop this case led to a white paper on CDCR that was covered by the Los Angeles Times.
Chang v. County of Siskiyou is a putative class action that was brought to stop the racial targeting of Hmong and other Asian communities by the sheriff and other county offices through traffic stops, restrictions on water access, and the imposition of unauthorized property liens. This case is currently in discovery.
Chhoeun v. Marin is a class action challenging the unlawful detention of Cambodian refugees through waves of mass raids. The trial court granted a preliminary injunction to stop the government from detaining class members without due process, which is on appeal while the parties try to negotiate a settlement.
Pars Equality Center v. Pompeo seeks to undo harms caused by the visa waiver process of the Muslim Ban. Plaintiffs won summary judgment on their Administrative Procedures Act claims, and we are currently awaiting a decision on a motion for class certification in this case.
Uber v. California Department of Industrial Relations and Lyft v. California Department of Industrial Relations are suits brought by Uber and Lyft to fight citations Cal/OSHA issued against them for basic health and safety violations during the pandemic. Individual drivers intervened as parties to the Cal/OSHA cases to help defend drivers’ rights to a safe workplace. They have now been sued by Uber and Lyft along with Cal/OSHA, and we are representing them. These cases are currently pending.
Amicus Briefs
ALC filed a dozen amicus briefs in 2023 in courts throughout the country. They covered almost all of our program areas. Several cases addressed abusive surveillance that threatens communities we serve. In one of them, Phillips v. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the plaintiffs could not force Customs and Border Protection to expunge records that were collected in a manner the court found unconstitutional because they could not show a continuing harm caused by the government's maintenance of the records. We explained that by this rationale, the government could keep records such as those collected of Japanese Americans leading to their internment and those gathered through unlawful spying on AMEMSA communities and Chinese scientists—the people spied upon would rarely have a way of knowing what the government is doing with the records after the fact. We urged the full Ninth Circuit to rehear the case.
We also filed a series of briefs in several U.S. Courts of Appeals continuing our challenge to the "plenary power doctrine," through which courts have held that immigration laws are largely immune from judicial review. We lay out in our briefs the racist history of this doctrine, which arose in the late 1800s to justify excluding Asian immigrants from this country. We urged the courts to abandon or severely restrict the doctrine.
We also led a coordinated effort with other Advancing Justice affiliates to file an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case on affirmative action decided last year Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College. We developed messaging resources for staff, partner organizations, and advocates across the country that helped Asian American organizations affirm their solidarity with Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities and center the experiences of Southeast Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander students and communities.