NEWS STATEMENT 11.07.23: IMPACT FUND MAKES GRANTS OF $172,500
One case, which encompasses prisoners’ rights, disability rights, access to healthcare, and due process, seeks to ensure that people with severe mental health disabilities receive adequate treatment instead of being forced to remain in jail when they have not been convicted of a crime.
Berkeley, CA 11.07.23 – The Impact Fund has made grants totaling $172,500 in its fall cycle to fund eight lawsuits that protect the rights of individuals threatened by uncaring corporate interests and small-minded government.
“Supporting litigation to defend individual rights and advance environmental justice is our way of ensuring that every voice is heard, and every community has a fair chance at a more equitable future,” said Impact Fund Executive Director Jocelyn Larkin.
The Impact Fund provided funding to Al Otro Lado to support a class action lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security for mandating the use of a smartphone app during the asylum process, preventing migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border from seeking asylum. Through the CBP One app, DHS has implemented a new form of metering asylum seekers at the southern border, a policy which courts previously found to be unconstitutional. The CBP One app is inaccessible to a large number of asylum-seekers, such as people without mobile phones or Internet connections, people with disabilities, and people who do not speak one of the three languages the app supports. The goal of this case is to uphold the right to seek asylum and ensure that emerging technologies do not entrench existing prejudice in the United States.
A grant was also made to Aaron Halegua, PLLC for a multi-plaintiff forced labor case on behalf of 15 Chinese immigrants who were compelled to trim cannabis illegally grown on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico. The plaintiffs responded to WeChat job ads promising $200 per day for "flower cutting" in New Mexico. After the plaintiffs arrived, guards forced them to work grueling 14-hour days in poorly ventilated hotel rooms trimming cannabis plants, yelled at and kicked them, and blocked all attempts to leave. Eventually, police arrested everyone at the operation, including the plaintiffs, during a raid. Charges against the plaintiffs were eventually dropped, but the plaintiffs were never compensated for their work. This case seeks to hold the traffickers and the operation’s investor accountable for violating forced labor and human trafficking laws.
In another funded class action, Disability Rights North Carolina is fighting to protect the rights of individuals with mental health disabilities who were found unable to proceed with a criminal trial due to their disability but have been held in North Carolina jails for months. These individuals who need mental health treatment are instead incarcerated, which can result in a further decline in mental health and stability. Caught in the Incapacity to Proceed (ITP) system, they have fallen further through the cracks, often invisible in the very system that put them there. Encompassing prisoners’ rights, disability rights, access to healthcare, and due process, this case seeks to ensure that people with severe mental health disabilities receive adequate treatment instead of being forced to remain in jail when they have not been convicted of a crime.
Equal Justice Under Law received a grant to underwrite a class action case against Ravalli County, Montana, for creating a modern-day debtors' prison through extortion of pretrial fees and threats of incarceration for non-payment. Those arrested are often placed on the Jail Diversion Program and required to pay pretrial fees for supervision, electronic monitoring, and alcohol monitoring to avoid waiting in jail until their trial. Many are low-income or unhoused, but ability to pay is not considered when setting the fees, which often add up to hundreds of dollars per month. Even when not guilty of the original crime, ironically, this “diversion” program lands people back in jail if they cannot pay their fees and, at times, the arrestees even are charged with another crime for failure to pay. The goal of this case is to end the abusive supervision programs like the Jail Diversion Program.
A grant was made to Equity Legal Services, Inc. to fund a multi-plaintiff environmental racism case challenging decades of neglect of the sanitary sewer and stormwater systems in Centreville, Illinois, a predominantly Black community. In addition to sewage and flooding from rainwater, residents contend with serious concerns for the safety and quality of their drinking water due to repeated water line breaks and raw sewage in surface water along roads and near broken water lines. This lawsuit seeks to force the city to address widespread flooding and sewage overflows that are harming public health and to recover damages for plaintiffs who have collectively lost thousands of dollars in repairs, water damage, and loss of value to their homes.
Another grantee, Public Law Center, is representing an affordable housing nonprofit and residents of a city-owned apartment complex in a city in Orange County, California. The petitioners allege that the city has violated California’s redevelopment and relocation assistance law, which has resulted in the residents living in squalid living conditions and with uncertainty about the future of their housing. The affected residents are low-income families in a disenfranchised neighborhood. Most of the residents are of Hispanic/Latino backgrounds. This action seeks to protect the families, who are, through the acts and omissions of the city, threatened with the imminent and unlawful loss of their homes without receiving relocation assistance and replacement housing as provided by law.
A grant was awarded to Southern Legal Counsel to fund a multi-plaintiff civil rights case against the city of Daytona Beach for violating the First Amendment right of unhoused people to request charity from fellow citizens. Since the enactment of Daytona Beach's panhandling ordinance in 2019, over 250 arrests for ordinance violations, resulting in jail time and substantial court fees, have disproportionately affected the city's unhoused population. For many individuals facing poverty, small donations are a primary source of income, especially in Florida, where there are limited benefits available to most single adults. This litigation intends to preserve the right of individuals to peacefully make requests for assistance from their fellow citizens.
WaterLegacy secured funding for an environmental justice case to block approval of a nickel, cobalt, and copper sulfide-ore mine that would threaten Indigenous, low-income, and rural communities in Minnesota. The Talon nickel mine would endanger the region by draining and devastating wild rice beds, wetlands, and shallow lakes through dewatering. It would also contaminate surface and drinking water, increasing health risks like cancer and lung diseases from nickel and particulate dust exposure. Furthermore, the mine would violate tribal rights, degrade nearby rivers and watersheds, and increase mercury contamination in fish. This collective impact would harm the wellbeing of local and downstream tribal and low-income communities that depend on fish for their sustenance. The goal of this case is to prevent the permit for the mine from being approved.
Helen Kang, Chair of the Impact Fund’s Grant Advisory Committee, said: “By providing grants that bolster economic, environmental, racial, and social justice, we invest in a future where fairness, sustainability, and equality prevail, empowering communities and individuals to thrive.”
ENDS
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About The Impact Fund
The Impact Fund was founded in December 1992 to help advance economic, environmental, racial, and social justice through the courts. Originally envisioned as a purely grantmaking organization, the Impact Fund has made 771 grants totaling $9,243,541. Click here for Grant Criteria and information about Grant Deadlines.
Since its inception, the Impact Fund has grown to include both advocacy and education in its range of services. Today, the Impact Fund litigates a small number of cases directly, authors amicus briefs, provides a substantial amount of consulting to civil rights practitioners free of charge, and presents an annual conference for plaintiff-side class action practitioners, a training institute for budding public interest class action practitioners, and numerous seminars and webinars. Click here for the 2023 Annual Report.
What Is Impact Litigation?
Impact Litigation is a lawsuit, often a class action, where the outcome of the case will advance economic, environmental, racial and/or social justice for a community or a large group, which may not have access to the courts on its own.