| Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law | |
| Formation: | 1969 |
| Founding Location: | Chicago, Illinois |
| Services: | Legal services |
| Owners: | --> |
The Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights is a consortium of American law firms in Chicago that provides legal services in civil rights cases
The Committee focuses on seven major projects: the Education Equity Project, the Community Law Project, the Housing Opportunity Project, the Hate Crimes Project, Voting Rights Project, Police Accountability Project and Settlement Assistance Program.
The committee has recently worked to promote and protect civil rights in the Chicago metropolitan area through education, healthcare delivery, the environment, and voting rights.[1]
The committee was established in 1969 to provide pro bono legal services in significant civil rights cases. The first board of the Chicago Lawyers' Committee believed that "the poor and the black can become full and equal participants in our economic and political systems only when they achieve the power to deal on equal terms with public and private institutions. An essential element of that power is access to expert legal resources." From 1969 to 1970, federal judge David S. Tatel was a director of the committee.[2]
Since 1976, the committee has operated as a separate, self-supporting, tax-exempt organization, although it continues to coordinate its activities with the National Lawyers' Committee and other local Lawyers' Committees throughout the country.
From nineteen firms in 1969, it has grown to 49 firms today.[3] The majority of services are performed in Cook County, but the committee's influence in some projects is felt throughout the Midwest. Each year, over 18,000 hours of professional legal services, with an estimated value of approximately $8.5 million, is donated from its pool of over 1,000 volunteer lawyers.
In 2006, the Committee filed suit against craigslist, Inc., the owner of craigslist.org. They alleged that craigslist, Inc. was in violation of the federal Fair Housing Act because it allowed people to post discriminatory ads.[4] The case was decided in favor of craigslist, and in 2008, in Chicago Lawyers' Committee For Civil Rights Under Law v. Craigslist, the Seventh Circuit upheld the finding that craigslist was not liable for the content of the ads.[5]
The Committee filed a lawsuit against the City of Chicago in 1998 that argued that the Chicago Fire Department's use of a very high cut score on the 1995 firefighter entrance exam discriminated against African Americans. They filed the case on behalf of African Americans who scored between 65 and 89 on the test. There were nearly 7,000 African Americans in the plaintiff class.
In 2005, Judge Gottschall ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and found that the city's use of the 89 cutoff score on the test was discriminatory, on several counts. The plaintiffs alleged that the very high cutoff score of 89, as compared to the 65 cutoff score that had previously been stated, had a disparate impact to discriminate against African Americans, since 78% of candidates above the cutoff were white. In the ruling, Judge Gottschall held that the city had not shown that the test effectively measured the skills it was supposed to measure, like the ability to learn from demonstration. Consequently, performance on the 1995 test did not predict performance in the Fire Academy or on the job.
This case has continued to be appealed, eventually reaching the Supreme Court,[6] who ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in May 2010. The case was then sent to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, where the City argued that plaintiffs failed to prove race discrimination when each hiring class is reviewed separately. During May 2011, the city's argument was rejected, representing a final victory for the plaintiffs on the merits of the case.
Ms. Parker and Ms. Pierce were participants in the Chicago Housing Authority's "Choose to Own" program, which allows qualified families to use their Housing Choice Vouchers (Section 8) for mortgage payments on homes instead of rent. Housing developer New Jerusalem agreed to sell new homes to both women, but subsequently refused to finalize the sales when it learned that part of their mortgage payments would come from the City of Chicago subsidies. Specifically, New Jerusalem refused to sign the necessary CHA documents, knowing that without it, the sales could not be completed.
In February 2011, the Chicago Commission on Human Relations found that New Jerusalem violated the Chicago Fair Housing Ordinance by discriminating against Ms. Parker and Ms. Pierce based on their source of income. According to the Chicago's Fair Housing Ordinance, denial of housing based on source of income is illegal discrimination.
In McFadden v. Board of Education for Illinois School District- a case involving educational inequities in the school district that includes Elgin, Illinois- federal District Court Judge Robert Gettleman issued a decision on July 11, 2013, holding that the school district has discriminated against Hispanic students in the operation of the district's gifted program. Over 40% of the students in the school district are Hispanic, but in recent years only 2% of the students in the district's elementary school gifted program have been Hispanic. This is in large part because the school district operates a separate program for gifted Hispanic students who learned English as a second language. Those students know English and are ready to participate in English-language classrooms and have been tested and found to be gifted, but are excluded from the mainstream gifted program.
As Judge Gettleman described it, this is "a separate, segregated program" that discriminates against Hispanic students, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Illinois Civil Rights Act. Judge Gettleman wrote that "there is no question that the District placed gifted Hispanic students in SET/SWAS based solely on their cultural identity." The Judge held that the school district, while not motivated by an evil or racist motive, engaged in intentional discrimination: "The `inevitability or foreseeability of consequences' permits `a strong inference that the adverse effects were desired.'"
The Employment Opportunity Project challenges all forms of racial, national origin, and sexual discrimination in both public and private workplaces. Since 1973, EOP has pursued equality in the workplace through a variety of avenues:
The committee's Fair Housing Project is to help eliminate housing discrimination based on race, national origin, familial status, physical and mental disability, sexual orientation, source of income, religion, gender, and other bases.
Staff and volunteers with the Fair Housing Project:
The committee is part of an area-wide network called CAFHA (Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance), which works to combat housing discrimination and promote integrated communities of opportunity through research, education, and advocacy.
The committee's Hate Crimes Project is the resource center on hate crime prevention and response in the Midwestern United States. The Project advocates for strong criminal prosecutions of perpetrators of bias violence, litigates civil cases for hate crime victims, mobilizes community support for them, educates community residents and professionals about applicable laws, and advocates for improved enforcement of the Illinois Hate Crime Act. A citywide advisory board, consisting of attorneys who have represented victims and community activists representing diverse neighborhoods and constituents, provides guidance and assistance.
The project combats hate crimes in several ways:
The Hate Crimes Project also provides free legal representation to victims of hate crime, both in criminal prosecutions of offenders and in civil suits. The Project has litigated several significant cases.
Staff and volunteer attorneys provide free legal assistance to support community development efforts led by entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations in Chicago's most underserved communities. The project's programs include:
The Settlement Assistance Project provides pro bono representation to low-income individuals with meritorious discrimination claims in federal court settlement conferences and US Equal Employment Commission mediations.
The Chicago Lawyers' Committee Voting Rights Project aims to prevent, reduce, and eliminate barriers to voting for minority and low-income residents and to increase overall political participation. The project works to protect fair elections that allow every eligible voter the opportunity to vote and to have their vote counted.
This project will address the following issues:
The Educational Equity Project (EEP) promotes civil rights in education and strong educational outcomes for minority children. The Committee believes that this is attainable by:
The Project staff and volunteer attorneys seek to combat restrictions in employment for previously incarcerated individuals through advocacy and education both to reduce the rates of incarceration and to reduce the stigma of incarceration.
This project works to combat air pollution and placement of toxic waste dumps in low-income and minority neighborhoods.