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The United People of Color Caucus (TUPOCC)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 14, 2007
Contact: Teague Briscoe, NLG Student National Vice President (510) 836-3260X.304
ABA Withdraws Proposed Interpretation 301-6
The United People of Color Caucus (TUPOCC) applauds the American Bar Association (ABA) Section on Legal Education & Admissions to the Bar, which last week recommended the withdrawal of Proposed Interpretation 301-6 for further study until February 2008. “This action affirms the ABA’s commitment to holding an open process and sincerely listening to public comments about how the proposed rule would have negatively impacted racial diversity in legal education,” said outgoing NLG Student Vice President, Teague Briscoe.
In collaboration with the National Latina/Latino Law Student Association (NLLSA), TUPOCC submitted a letter in opposition to Proposed Interpretation 301-6 to the ABA on May 10, 2007. In its letter, TUPOCC and NLLSA argued that the proposed rule change would have effectively closed the door through which substantial numbers of people of color have achieved legal education and democratic representation in U.S. society’s bench and bar.
Proposed Interpretation 301-6 would have required that first time bar exam passage rates reach 70% for ABA accredited schools throughout the country – regardless of the wide variety in state bar passage rates. In turn, schools serving non-traditional law students, including substantial numbers of students racialized as non-White would have likely been adversely affected by the new interpretation because of the well-known correlation between race and bar passage. For example, in its letter critiquing the proposed interpretation, the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at the U.C. Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), noted that White and Asian American law graduates pass the bar at rates slightly above the 70% requirement, whereas law graduates racialized as Black, Native American or Latina/o pass slightly below the requirement.
Similarly, in his well-cited study, A Critique Of ABA Proposed Interpretation 301-6 Of Standard Regarding Law School Bar Passage, Professor William Wesley Patton of Whittier Law School predicted that all of the five ABA accredited law schools with the highest African-American enrollment (Howard, Southern, Texas Southern, North Carolina Central, and District of Columbia) would fail to meet the proposed interpretation. William Wesley Patton.
Moreover, while Latinos comprise 12.5% of the national population, Latina/o lawyers make up only 3.7% of all ABA members. In California, a state with a 35% Latino population, Latinos constitute only 3.8% of active bar members. The ABA’s proposed rule change would have likely reduced this percentage even further by constricting the enrollment of new Latina/o law students at exactly the moment when the Latina/o community, and all people threatened by the current wave of xenophobia and nativist racism that is rampant in our nation today, need more attorneys who are sensitive to the distinctive sociolegal conditions of communities with high proportions of new immigrants.
“If the ABA adopted proposed Interpretation 301-6, the Latina/o community would have suffered a double hit,” said Marc-Tizoc González, former NLLSA attorney general and a staff attorney at the Alameda County Homeless Action Center. He continued, “Not only do people categorized as Hispanic or Latina/o have lower-first time bar passage rates; they also tend to have lower LSAT scores, which are weakly correlated with first time bar passage. Therefore, the proposed seventy percent first time bar passage trigger would have negatively impacted Latinas/os because we—like African Americans, Native Americans, and groups like Pilipinos and Southeast Asians who are within the Asian American coalition yet are obscured by the failure to collect disaggregated data—tend to pass the bar exam on the first time at rates that are below the proposed trigger.”
Dozens of law school deans, professors and research centers, along with individual attorneys, specialty bars, and other organizations submitted comment letters, and the Standards Review Committee of the ABA Section on Legal Education & Admissions heard the testimony of fifteen individuals, all critiquing the proposed interpretation during its May 16, 2007 hearing, held in San Francisco, California.
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CONTACT:
Marjorie Cohn, NLG president, marjorie@tjsl.edu
Heidi Boghosian, NLG Executive Director, director@nlg.org
NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD CALLS ON CONGRESS TO REPEAL WARRANTLESS DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE
Congress put its stamp of approval on the unconstitutional wiretapping of Americans by amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in the "Protect America Act of 2007."
The new law takes the power to authorize electronic surveillance out of the hands of a judge and places it in the hands of the attorney general (AG) and the director of national intelligence (DNI). FISA had required the government to convince a judge there was probable cause to believe the target of the surveillance was a foreign power or the agent of a foreign power. The law didn't apply to wiretaps of foreign nationals abroad. Its restrictions were triggered only when the surveillance targeted a U.S. citizen or permanent resident or when the surveillance was obtained from a wiretap physically located in the United States. The attorney general was required to certify that the communications to be monitored would be exclusively between foreign powers and there was no substantial likelihood a U.S. person would be overheard.
Under the new law, the AG and the DNI can authorize "surveillance directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States." The surveillance can take place inside the United States, and there is no requirement of any connection with al-Qaeda, terrorism or criminal behavior. The mandate that the AG certify there is no substantial likelihood a U.S. person will be overheard has been eliminated.
The new law violates the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court has held that government wiretapping must be supported by a search warrant based on probable cause and issued by a judge. The Court has struck down warrantless domestic surveillance.
Finally, the new law requires telephone companies to collect data and turn it over to the federal government. It also grants immunity against lawsuits to these companies, many of which are currently defendants in civil cases.
The rush to push this legislation through last week was likely a preemptive strike by Bush to head off adverse rulings in lawsuits challenging the legality of his Terrorist Surveillance Program. On August 9, a federal district court in San Francisco was to hear oral arguments by lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Lawyers Guild in CCR v. Bush. And on August 15, Guild lawyers and others will argue Al-Haramain v. Bush in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
By its terms, the new law will sunset in 180 days. But this is a specious limitation. The AG and DNI can authorize surveillance for up to one year. Just before the statute is set to expire around February 1, 2008, they could approve surveillance that will last until after Bush leaves office.
The National Lawyers Guild calls on Congress to repeal the "Protect America Act of 2007."
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NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD DEMANDS RELEASE OF GABNET 3 - U.S. BASED ACTIVISTS BEING HELD IN THE PHILIPPINES
- VIGIL TODAY AT 4 p.m., Philippine Consulate - WHAT: Vigil demanding the immediate release of human rights activists Dr. Annalisa Enrile, Founders Ninotchka Rosca and Judith Mirkinson from the Philippines
WHEN: 13 August 2007, Monday, 4 pm
WHERE: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago
CONTACT: National Lawyers Guild - Vanessa Lucas, 619-665-0674, vankatlucas@hotmail.com, Rachel Lederman, 415 350-6496 rlederman@2momslaw.com]
GABNet - Faith Santilla 626-353-2649 faithsantilla@yahoo.com
NEW YORK
Philippine Consulate
556 Fifth Ave.
New York, NY 10036
nynj@gabnet.org
LOS ANGELES
*Overnight Vigil starting at 4:00pm
Philippine Consulate
3600 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90010
losangeles@gabnet.org
SAN FRANCISCO
Philippine Consulate
447 Sutter St.
San Francisco, CA 94108
sfbayarea@gabnet.org
CHICAGO
Philippine Consulate
30 North Michigan Ave.
Suite 2100
Chicago, IL 60602
chicago@gabnet.org
PHOTO OPPORTUNITIES
On Monday, August 13, 2007, vigils will take place at Philippine Consular Offices across the United States to demand that three women human rights activists be allowed to return to their homes in the US from the Philippines. The Philippine Government has placed the three women, leaders of U.S. based solidarity organization GABRIELA Network (GABNet), on a "hold list."
On August 5, Dr. Annalisa Enrile, a U.S. citizen, was stopped from boarding her return flight home to Los Angeles from Manila. Dr. Enrile is the national chair of GABNet. Two other leaders of GABNet who are scheduled to depart on Tuesday, August 14, are reportedly also on the hold list: internationally acclaimed writer Ninotchka Rosca, a US Legal Permanent Resident, and human rights activist Judith Mirkinson, a U.S. citizen. The "GABNet 3" were in the Philippines attending an international women's conference; Dr. Enrile had also brought University of Southern California graduate students on a summer immersion program. Enrile intends to again attempt to depart from the Manila airport with Rosca and Mirkinson on Tuesday.
The Philippine Government appears to have targeted the GABNet 3 for their work garnering international attention to human rights violations by the Arroyo regime. The GABNet 3 led American women lawyers on a human rights fact finding delegation to the Philippines in 2006; the delegation published a report implicating the Arroyo regime in the extrajudicial assassinations of close to 900 activists and exposing the groundless nature of Arroyo's criminal prosecutions of opposition legislators, including Gabriela Women's Party Representative Liza Maza. All of the members of the 2006 National Lawyers Guild (NLG) / GABNet delegation have reportedly been placed on this same list, which was used to keep international human rights lawyers from from ENTERING the Philippines during the South East Asian Nations Summit in January, 2007.
"It's clear that the Philippine government, led by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, is desperately trying to intimidate and silence international solidarity," GABNet Secretary General Doris Mendoza said, "especially those focusing on the countless human rights violations and political killings. But our membership and allies are now even more determined. For us, this harrassment of the GABNet 3 re-confirms the undemocratic and unjust character of this US-backed Macapagal Arroyo regime."
On Monday, August 13, 2007, vigils will take place at Philippine Consular Offices in four cities to demand that the 3 be taken off the "hold" list and allowed to board flights home on Tuesday.
The NLG and GABNet are also calling on concerned individuals and organizations to contact their Senators and Representatives to urge the safe return of the GABNet 3; and to fax the US Embassy, American Citizen Service, at 011-632-522-3242 and US Ambassador Kenney, at 011-632-522-4361.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, August 1, 2007
Contact: Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director, NLG 212-679-5100, ext.11
NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD RELEASES REPORT ON GOVERNMENT THREATS TO THE FIRST AMENDMENT
New York. The National Lawyers Guild has released its second comprehensive report on government violations of First Amendment rights. “Punishing Protest: Government Tactics that Suppress Free Speech” documents how negative portrayals of protest and protesters in the mass media pave the way for a broad hierarchy of governmental threats to the First Amendment. The report includes testimonials from protesters who have experienced firsthand unlawful police conduct; it also documents case histories and chronicles steps the National Lawyers Guild is taking to address escalating threats to civil liberties. Chapter titles include: Protest: A Maligned Tradition; Applying the “Terrorist” Label to Activists; A Catalogue of Unlawful Government Tactics; Police Lies, Tampering, and Videotape; Court Settlements and Decrees to Protest Free Speech and Political Activity; Case Study: Bicyclists Under Fire.
The hierarchy of threats to free speech ranges from street-level police tactics to local and state governments enacting legislation that punishes actions more severely if motivated by a particular ideology. At the highest level of government it involves spying on politically-active individuals, using grand juries and FBI intimidation to collect data on activists, and labeling them “terrorists” in order to secure harsh prison sentences and deter dissent.
“Constitutional protections are especially imperiled when the government categorizes legitimate political activity—from bicycle rides to animal rights protests—as a threat to national security. The Bush administration has exploited the events of September 11 as a license to implement a conservative agenda to intimidate anyone who criticizes the government,” said Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild and author of the report.
In 2004 the Guild released “The Assault on Free Speech, Public Assembly, and Dissent” (foreword by Lewis Lapham) cataloguing the increasingly sophisticated law enforcement tactics that infringe on First Amendment protected activity around the nation. Some of the police activities that are defined and documented include rush tactics, pre-event searches and raids, denial of permits, screening checkpoints, free-speech zones, snatch squads, use of less-lethal weapons against passive protesters, and intimidations by media.
Both reports are available in hard copy, or for download at www.nlg.org
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New York. The National Lawyers Guild has launched this new "press blog" as part of their new website. The blog will make it easier for members of the media, legal and political activists and others to find and subscribe to the latest releases from the NLG.
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