PCJF/CPLL Executive Director, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, spoke with USA Today about Trump’s Executive Order:

Excerpt from USA Today. Read full article here.

In what President Donald Trump says is a move to protect the rule of law and free speech advocates see as an attack on it, the White House is promising tougher punishments for vandalizing public monuments, statues and religious displays.

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Free-speech advocates called the orders a direct attack on protests and the First Amendment.

Five legal organizations including Palestine Legal, the Asian Law Caucus, the Center for Protest Law and Litigation, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, and the National Lawyers Guild of Los Angeles sent a letter to Pomona College today warning the school that its unprecedented suspensions of a group of students for the remaining 2024-2025 academic year without due process violated First Amendment principles and California law. 

The legal letter urges Pomona College to revoke the unlawful suspensions immediately, noting that the college has caused immediate and severe harm to all students who have received the year-long suspension by abruptly depriving them of housing and all access to campus. 

“While peaceful protests were happening across the world, the California Highway Patrol and the District Attorney have jailed the San Francisco protestors on trumped up felony conspiracy charges to preemptively punish them for their advocacy by holding them in jail. The overcharging by the CHP is an abusive attempt to silence those who are demanding a ceasefire and an end to the U.S. government’s unconditional support for the genocide and famine that Israel is inflicting on Gaza   We demand the peace activists be immediately released on their own recognizance, and we will continue to defend their right to speak out against genocide.”

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), and its Center for Protest Law & Litigation, welcomes Rachel Lederman as Senior Counsel to lead its new West Coast office based in Oakland, Calif.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund demands charges be dropped immediately. PCJF also demands that there be an independent community investigation into the command officials who planned and executed this assault and that there be disciplinary action taken against them.

Photo by Joe Rivano Barros

Lawsuit Challenges D.C. MPD’s December 12, 2020, Attack on Peaceful BLM Demonstrators While Proud Boys Were Allowed to Maraud Throughout D.C.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), and its Center for Protest Law & Litigation, filed a federal lawsuit against the District of Columbia challenging the Metropolitan Police Department’s “repressive and violent tactics including the authorized indiscriminate use of ‘less lethal’ projectile weapons against peaceful protestors and bystanders, gratuitously and without notice or warning and in order to intentionally retaliate against and inflict pain upon protestors challenging policing in our society.”

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) and its project, the Center for Protest Law & Litigation (CPLL), filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia to force disclosure of records under D.C.’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) involving the DC Metropolitan Police Department’s violent response to racial justice demonstrations against police misconduct throughout 2020.

The Center for Protest Law and Litigation files a federal lawsuit against Dolton Police Department for violating protestor’s constitutional rights.

View this guide on federal employees’ right to protest.

The Center for Protest Law and Litigation joined the Climate Defense Project, Honor the Earth, the Climate Disobedience Center, and CodePink as Amici Curiae in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that the District Court violated Ms. Reznicek’s First Amendment rights by imposing the terrorism enhancement.