Our Litigation

Anti-Trump Protesters

Stopping Trump’s Plan to Crush Protest in the Nation’s Capital

In 2018, at the same time the Trump administration and other proponents of bigotry, repression, and environmental devastation ratcheted up their verbal attacks against a protest against them, they took concrete actions to shut down free speech actions in Washington, D.C. In rapid-response, PCJF then led a national organizing, education, and outreach campaign bringing together organizations and grassroots groups across the country, that resulted in more than 140,000 comments to the formal record.

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Very large protest in Washington D.C. A lot of people hold signs that read "end the war now"

The Fight to Strike Down Unconstitutional Regulations on Postering

The PCJF waged a decade long battle to strike down the District of Columbia’s unconstitutional regulations on postering winning a string of victories in the lower court which forced the District to repeatedly rewrite its unlawful regulations. The final iterations were upheld by the D.C. Circuit despite the PCJF’s continued objection to remaining rules that determined how posters were regulated based on the content of the words. 

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A siren on a police car flashes. The PCJF sued Laurel Maryland Police for publicly strip-searching a man during a racial profiling traffic stop.

Federal Civil Rights Lawsuit Over Public Strip-Search and Racial Profiling Traffic Stop 

The PCJF and the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs filed a federal lawsuit against the Laurel Maryland Police Department for publicly strip-searching Allan Sergeant during a baseless traffic stop which occurred solely on the basis of racial profiling. The lawsuit ended with a $125,000 settlement for the plaintiff.

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Pershing Park Mass False Arrests

In 2002, D.C. MPD and U.S. Park Police encircled Pershing Park and refused to allow anyone to leave before arresting and hog-tying peaceful demonstrators. The case received national and international focus after it was revealed by the PCJF that the MPD and its attorneys had engaged in widespread destruction and withholding of evidence. The case resulted in more than $10 million in financial compensation and substantial reforms of MPD and U.S. Park Police practices.

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Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and actor Danny Glover. Glover is speaking into a microphone.

Corruption of Justice: Miami Reporters Paid by the U.S. Government

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund served as the legal arm of a multi-year Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) effort that uncovered thousands of pages of previously unreleased materials revealing that the U.S. government was paying Miami-based journalists who saturated the Miami media with reports that were highly inflammatory and prejudicial to the Cuban Five at the same time as the government conducted its prosecution of the men. 

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Photo of two pill packs of Plan B on a colorful background

Winning the Fight for Over-the-Counter Access to Plan B, Emergency Contraception 

For over a decade, the FDA refused to waive restrictions on access to the Morning-After Pill that were never supported by scientific evidence, politicizing access to reproductive health care. In June 2013, the Obama Administration agreed to make the drug available without restrictions and dropped its appeal with the Second Circuit.

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Documents Revealed the Government’s Coordinated Crackdown on the Occupy Movement

The PCJF filed FOIA requests following evictions of Occupy encampments across the nation with the DOJ, DHS, FBI, CIA, the National Park Service (NPS), and municipal agencies. We obtained thousands of pages of documents showing the behind-the-scenes surveillance and coordination of the crackdown of Occupy, including the use of anti-terrorism authority against peaceful protestors.

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Forcing Disclosure of the General and Special Orders of the MPD

For years, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) secretly operated under a set of general and special orders which it refused to make public or provide to civil rights organizations and lawyers. The PCJF filed suit to disgorge this large body of material that the MPD sought to conceal from the public. After hard-fought litigation in which the MPD’s attorneys at the OAG fought disclosure, the PCJF succeeded in forcing these orders to be revealed to the public with a landmark ruling which pulled back the MPD’s veil of secrecy.

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Occupy Wall Street – Brooklyn Bridge Mass Arrests

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund filed the class action lawsuit over the mass trap and arrest of 700 peaceful Occupy protestors on the Brooklyn Bridge. The lawsuit prevailed in the District Court and again at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which then took the unusual procedural step of vacating its opinion and reversing itself.

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Washington, DC. USA. April 16, 2000 keywords: protest, protesters, demonstration, demonstrators, activists, ruckus society, imf, international monetary fund, world bank, civil disobedience

April 2000 IMF Mass False Arrests

Class action impact litigation brought by the PCJF on behalf of more than 700 people, including demonstrators, journalists, tourists and passersby led to major and substantive reform in police policies and practices in the handling of mass demonstrations in Washington, D.C. The $13.7 million settlement was the then-largest protest settlement in the history of the U.S.

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Military-Style Checkpoint Program Shut Down

The PCJF filed the successful lawsuit challenging the military-style checkpoint program set up in Trinidad, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Washington, D.C., where police surrounded the targeted neighborhood, interrogated people without suspicion, and prohibited entry to those persons who lacked a police-defined "legitimate reason" for driving into the neighborhood. A unanimous three-judge panel of D.C. Circuit declared the checkpoint program unconstitutional.

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