Impact Litigation

Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California files lawsuits and other actions in state and federal agencies in several areas of the law. The Impact Litigation Unit provides legal services that address the following issues.

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Employment and Workplace Issues

Employment and the Workplace issues including wage and hour, discrimination and retaliation

Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California provides legal services to individuals who are experiencing problems in employment and in the workplace, including wage-and-hour, discrimination, and retaliation issues.

We may be able to assist you if:

Your employer has not properly paid you for your work,
Your employer has treated you differently than other workers because of your race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or another characteristic, or
Your employer has fired you, reduced your hours, or otherwise treated you poorly because you stood up for your rights or the rights of others in the workplace.

Please call our legal hotlines if you need legal help for any of these problems.

highlights of our work

Highlights of Our Work

A port truck driver speaking at a press conference in February 2014 prior to a court hearing considering whether coerced waivers can keep Latino and Korean port drivers out of a class action lawsuit filed by Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California and the Wage Justice Center to recover stolen wages.

In 2013, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California joined the Wage Justice Center in representing a class of more than 400 Latino and Korean port truck drivers that had been misclassified as independent contractors by a family of related corporate entities that stole millions of dollars from them. The drivers worked up to 16 hours a day, six days a week for poverty wages, which took a tremendous toll on their health and family relationships. The port trucking enterprise used corporate shell games and a bankruptcy filing to escape responsibility for paying drivers their hard-earned wages, but we doggedly followed them into bankruptcy court and used novel theories to hold the asset-bearing companies responsible. The case settled for $5 million and sent a strong message to port trucking companies that they cannot profit on the backs of their drivers and use bankruptcy to escape their debts to drivers.

Human Trafficking

Human trafficking and abuse in foreign labor recruitment

Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California provides legal services to victims and survivors of human trafficking and to individuals who have experienced problems with agencies and employers that recruit workers to work in the United States.

We may be able to assist you if:

Someone made you work by lying to you, tricking you, holding a debt over you, taking your passport, and/or threatening to hurt you or your family or report you to the police or to immigration, or
You experienced problems with an agency or individual that recruited you to move to the United States for work.

Please call our legal hotlines if you need legal help for any of these problems.

highlights of our work

Highlights of Our Work

The L’Amande Bakery workers and their families, Congressman Ted Lieu, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California staff at a press conference in June 2016 discussing the T visas that Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California obtained for the workers and their families.

In 2016, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California and its pro bono co-counsel Latham & Watkins LLP obtained a $15.2 million judgment in favor of a group of eleven Filipino workers who were trafficked to the United States to work at L’Amande Bakery, high-end French bakeries in Southern California owned by Ana Moitinho de Almeida and her husband Gonçalo Mointinho de Almeida. The workers were fraudulently lured by their employer to the United States from the Philippines on E-2 visas and then subjected to abusive and exploitative working conditions, including workdays as long as 17 hours and wages as low as three dollars an hour. The Almeidas used threats of debt, deportation, and financial ruin in the Philippines to maintain their economic exploitation of the workers. After the workers arrived in the United States, the Almeidas threatened them with a significant debt of $11,000 each unless they agreed to work under these illegal conditions for at least three years. Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California also obtained for all of the workers T visas, which provides victims of human trafficking temporary legal status and work authorization and allows them to bring their families to the U.S.

Discrimination

Discrimination, including racial and religious targeting, by both private and governmental actors

Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California provides individual legal services, brings impact litigation, and engages in policy advocacy on behalf of individuals and groups who have been the target of racial and religious targeting and profiling, by private and/or governmental actors.

We provide representation to individuals who have been harmed by:

FBI and other law enforcement interviews,
Hate incidents, including in response to reports made here,
Obtrusive questioning and searches at airports, and
Other discriminatory surveillance and profiling programs.

Please call our legal hotlines if you need legal help for any of these problems. We also encourage you to look at some of the know-your-rights resources in this compilation.

highlights of our work

Highlights of Our Work

Naji Hamdan, who was detained and tortured at a black site in the United Arab Emirates, and his son.

In 2015, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California began litigating a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case seeking information about the United States government’s involvement in the overseas detention, interrogation, and torture of U.S. citizen Naji Hamdan. Between August and October 2008, Mr. Hamdan was detained and tortured at a black site in the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), where he was living at the time. Mr. Hamdan believes that his detention and torture in the U.A.E. was at the behest of the U.S. government, pursuant to its well-known practice of “proxy detention” of terrorism suspects abroad. This and other practices adopted by the government in the name of counter terrorism after 9/11 have had a disproportionately harmful effect on Muslim Americans, like Mr. Hamdan. Through the lawsuit, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California and co-counsel the ACLU of Southern California are challenging the government’s withholding of key documents that would shed much needed public light on the U.S. government’s involvement in Mr. Hamdan’s detention and torture abroad, as well as serve to deter such inhumane practices going forward.

Access to Government Services

Access to government services for individuals with limited English proficiency

Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California brings targeted lawsuits to strengthen language access to government services for individuals with limited English proficiency.

We may be able to assist you if you have limited English proficiency and:

You were unable to access government services in your native language,
You were not offered interpretation services when visiting a government office, or
You received important documents from the government without a written translation in your native language.

Please call our legal hotlines if you need legal help for any of these problems.

highlights of our work

Highlights of Our Work

Michelle Lim, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California’s Voting Rights Policy Advocate, with her multilingual “I Voted” sticker in November 2016.

In 2014, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California joined the forces with community partners and other legal service providers to challenge the California Department of Social Services’ decision to send Medi-Cal renewal forms to its beneficiaries only in English. Without legally mandated translations of the forms into non-English languages—including Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Hmong, Cambodian, Arabic, and Farsi—many faced termination of their Medi-Cal benefits, simply because they had no way of knowing that they had to complete a renewal form. Over 40% of Medi-Cal beneficiaries report speaking a primary language other than English, and before 2014, beneficiaries received renewal forms with non-English translations. Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California and its partners successfully obtained an emergency court decision to prevent the State from disenrolling any Medi-Cal beneficiaries based on the cancellation notices it sent only in English. Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California and its partner continue to litigate this matter.

Education Rights

Education rights and problems in schools

Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California provides legal services to parents and students who are experiencing problems in schools related to language access, bullying, and/or discrimination.

We may be able to assist you if:

You are a parent that does not speak English fluently and cannot communicate with your child’s school,
Your child is experiencing bullying because of their race, national origin, immigration status, or religion,
Your child has been identified as an English Learner and is not getting proper services, and
You are involved in an effort to preserve or expand a race-conscious admissions policy at your college or university.

Please call our legal hotlines if you need legal help for any of these problems.

highlights of our work

Highlights of Our Work

A Valley News headline from May 2017 describing the agreement that the Temecula Valley Unified School District had reached to resolve the complaint that Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California filed concerning the District’s English Learner programs.

In 2014, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights (OCR) against Temecula Valley Unified School District (TVUSD) on behalf of a concerned teacher for failing to provide its middle school English Learner (EL) students with adequate language support, and in some cases, eliminating all EL services. OCR found evidence that many EL students in TVUSD middle schools were not receiving proper services and some students received little or no support, preventing them from learning. OCR also found that TVUSD’s practices resulting EL students missing the opportunity to receive special help in accessing the core curriculum, which were provided to non-EL students. Based on evidence gathered during its investigation, OCR added a third issue to its investigation: whether TVUSD adequately notifies parents that do not speak English fluently of information that is called to the attention of other parents. OCR did not complete its investigation because it entered into a resolution agreement with TVUSD. Under the agreement, TVUSD will convene a coordinating committee comprised of an EL expert, EL teachers, EL parents, and a district administrator to revise the EL Master Plan to address deficiencies raised by the complaint and investigation, train teachers on how to implement the Master Plan effectively, and compensatory education for EL students that did not receive any ELD instruction. OCR will monitor TVUSD until it fulfills all requirements of the agreement.

Other Civil Rights Issues

Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California provides legal services to individuals and groups that face other kinds of problems in addition to the topics discussed above. Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California uses lawsuits to fight against economic and social injustice, including violations of basic civil and human rights.

We may be able to assist you if:

You have experienced problems voting in local, state or national elections, because you do not speak English fluently, or because your voting district is shaped in a way that restricts the voting power of minorities,
You are being evicted from your home because of your national origin, ethnicity, race or because you do not speak English fluently, or
You are a noncitizen who needs assistance in deportation proceedings or other matters related to your immigration status.

Please call our legal hotlines if you need legal help for any of these problems.

highlights of our work

Highlights of Our Work

Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California staff (L:R) Aman Thind, Laboni Hoq, Meeran Mahmud, and Christopher Lapinig at Los Angeles International Airport, during efforts to help passengers affected by the Muslim travel ban in January 2017.

In 2015, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, with the ACLU of Southern California, the Law Office of Robert Rubin, and Sidley Austin, LLP sued the City of Fullerton for violating the California Voting Rights Act. The lawsuit alleged that the city’s “at-large” system for electing city council members denied large segments of the community — especially Asian Americans — a voice in how their city is governed. “At-large” voting meant all eligible voters in the city selected elected officials from the same pool of candidates. In contrast, district-based voting divided the city council seats into smaller districts, which allows for a more local approach. Despite nearly a quarter of all eligible voters in Fullerton being Asian American, no Asian Americans served on the five-person city council. Within just a few months of filing the lawsuit, the city of Fullerton agreed to change from an “at-large” voting system to designing a “district-based” approach, which ensured the vote of communities of interest, such as Asian Americans, was not diluted by folding it into a city-wide voting population. Today, Fullerton’s city council elections are district-based.

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Impact Litigation

Employment and Workplace Issues

Highlights of Our Work

Human Trafficking

Highlights of Our Work

Discrimination

Highlights of Our Work

Access to Government Services

Highlights of Our Work

Education Rights

Highlights of Our Work

Other Civil Rights Issues

Highlights of Our Work

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