On episode 30 of “The Activist Files,” Center for Constitutional Rights Senior Staff Attorney Ghita Schwarz and Senior Staff Attorney Chinyere Ezie talked with Make the Road New York’s Lead Organizer Eliana Fernandez about the impact organizing played in the two key Supreme Court of the United States’ decisions – Wolf v. Vidal, the decision that preserves Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which Eliana was a plaintiff, the Bostock/Zarda/Stephens cases, which the Court found that an employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The movement lawyers and activist agreed the organizing and narrative shifting in some of the cases had the justices so worried that the credibility of the court was brought to the forefront.
Eliana talks about her brave decision to be a plaintiff in the DACA case – she’s a DACA recipient and a mom, who didn’t want to be separated from her children. She said Make the Road New York protected her and gave her the tools to empower the movement.
And Chinyere, who wrote an amicus brief in Aimee Stephens, of R. G. & G. R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and attended the argument, tied this Title VII case to Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, which held that Catholic elementary school teachers are “ministers,” so they cannot sue their employer for employment discrimination. While Our Lady of Guadalupe is not about LGBTQIA+ rights, it impacts that community because statutes that prohibit discrimination, from age to disability, were not applied to this case because the employer is a religious organization and the employees, who were subject-matter teachers, were classified as “ministers.” Chinyere noted that Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru did not have a large movement behind the case and wonders if the court didn’t feel compelled to uphold the anti-discrimination statutes because of the lack of public awareness and involvement.
September 18, 2020, New York – Even as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has repeatedly sought emergency funding and threatened to furlough its employees in recent months, new...
...Meanwhile, the ACLU has filed more than 40 lawsuits nationwide to force immigration authorities to release people at risk of serious illness from the disease. Other organizations, such as the...
Lawyers Concerned Their Research on Legal Databases Like LexisNexis and Westlaw May Be Shared With Immigration Officials at ICE and DHS September 14, 2020, New York/Chicago/Phoenix – Today, Mijente,...
Mijente, the Immigrant Defense Project (IDP), CUNY Law School’s Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic (HRGJ) and the Center for Constitutional Rights have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)...
Emails show that in 2018, USCIS employees were rewarded with bonuses and a celebratory lunch for helping to create a new draconian "public charge" rule, which penalizes immigrants who access certain public benefits or are presumed at risk of needing public benefits, targeting low-income people of color and intentionally obstructing lawful immigration. The rule also discriminates against immigrants based on their wealth, race, country of origin, language abilities or disability status.
Motion emphasizes that asylum seekers have been seriously injured, raped, and even killed after CBP officials turned them back at U.S. border September 8, 2020, San Diego – Asylum seekers who have...
As the question of how to rein in law enforcement abuses takes center stage nationally, join the Center for Constitutional Rights, CLEAR, and CUNY School of Law for a virtual panel...
On Tuesday, September 1st we will be in court representing our Arizona partners, Black Lives Matter (BLM) Phoenix Metro, Mijente Support Committee, Puente Human Rights Movement, and the Arizona...
...Applauding the decision, the Center for Constitutional Rights noted: “The Second Circuit took a long look at the history of the meaning of public charge.” “It found that DHS’s rule violated...
