LatinoJustice PRLDEF

LatinoJustice seeks to ensure and defend the human and civil rights of all Latinx people and communities. Within that context, we seek to remove barriers and obstacles to Latinos and Latinas exercising their rights and freedoms both within the United States and beyond. LatinoJustice aims to increase access to housing, education, employment, community and civic engagement, and the vote for all Latinx living in the United States. We also seek to protect and defend Latinx from discrimination, hate crimes, excessive and unjust policing and criminal justice policies, and other attempts to diminish or suppress their human and civil rights.

LatinoJustice employs litigation, legal advocacy, leadership training and civic engagement activities to remove barriers that compromise Latinx civil rights and to equip Latinx communities with the knowledge, skills and confidence to become active members of the community. We take on cases, representing classes of people whose rights have been violated or denied, and our victories have an impact on hundreds of thousands, even millions of Latinx and other oppressed communities. For example, on Long Island we represented a group of Latina immigrant workers whose employer had been sexually harassing them and threatening to report them to ICE. We successfully won a settlement award for the workers, and this serves as a deterrent to that and other employers who are now aware of the consequences for their unlawful practices. Our education, pipeline and leadership development activities have resulted in thousands of Latinx joining the ranks of lawyers and helping to effect positive change.
We have recently ramped up our community advocacy work to engage and empower communities to advocate for themselves. In addition, we launched a racial justice initiative in 2021 to apply racial justice analysis and strategy to each of our core programmatic pillars.

LatinoJustice has a long record of achievement in the area of civil rights, with precedent-setting legal victories from the 1970s to today. Our legal staff is comprised of highly experienced and dedicated civil rights attorneys, trained and mentored by our network of legal champions. Among our staff are constitutional law experts, internationally-respected human rights attorneys, culturally-competent, multi-lingual advocates and community leaders who form a cadre of professionals whose record of achievement in defending the rights of Latinx to vote, work, learn and live without discrimination or fear is impressive. Our victories in the areas of voting rights, immigrant justice, economic justice and more have paved the way for our peer legal defense groups to continue to mount legal challenges in the face of renewed hate-based laws being perpetuated by our current anti-immigrant climate. Likewise, our decades of fostering Latinx leadership is supported by deep expertise and commitment.

LatinoJustice has a lengthy list of accomplishments that run the gamut from securing bilingual ballots for Spanish-speaking voters and eliminating height requirements for NYC government employment candidates to defending Latinx immigrants from unlawful ICE raids and helping thousands of Latinx realize the dream of becoming a lawyer. The civil and human rights landscape is very different from that which we confronted in 1972 when the organization was founded, but some of our battles retain the same fundamental DNA. We have fought and won against many attempts in this country to limit the well-being and power of communities of color. There is still work to be done and the swell of bigotry and hatred coming from the federal administration has created new challenges but every victory we achieve ensures that we are successful in defending the principles of democracy, justice, equality and liberty.