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The Appellate Litigation Clinic takes pro se-filed Ninth Circuit appeals so students working with supervisors may develop a legal theory, research and draft appellate briefs, and then argue the appeal before a Ninth Circuit panel of three judges. The cases range from immigration asylum cases involving persecution from all corners of the globe to prisoner 1983 cases raising constitutional challenges to conditions of confinement, First Amendment challenges to government action, and even copyright battles over the famed Empire television series. The clinic has had a remarkable success rate throughout its history with more than 50 percent of appeals won. Last year, the clinic had a 100 percent success rate across six federal appeals for the very first time.

One immigration appeal from 2018 involved a Chinese citizen who attended secret home Christian worship services, was captured, tortured, and then fled to the U.S. upon escape. Denied relief here by the immigration courts, the clinic secured a reversal of the agency entitling the client to an asylum grant so he may live out his life in the United States. A recent appeal also involved a First Amendment challenge to prison regulations limiting Muslim prisoners’ access to religious oils for worship and requiring them to shave their beards. After the students mounted the First Amendment appeal, the Ninth Circuit reversed, allowing the clinic’s client access to his religious oils for worship and allowing him to maintain his beard. Another recent immigration appeal that students argued secured a reversal in a published opinion where the Ninth Circuit sided with the Second, Third and Eleventh Circuits and against the Fifth and Sixth Circuits on the issue of whether premature notices of appeal may ripen to preserve an immigrant’s appellate review rights. As a result, the students preserved the appeal and then secured a merits reversal of an in absentia removal order that had befallen the client, so she may now have her day in court on her removal trial.

The new Civil Rights Litigation Clinic (CRLC) is designed to give students a realistic experience in bringing civil rights cases. Students are exposed to a wide range of civil rights litigation, including individual cases and class actions. Students work on cases involving free speech and assembly; wrongful detention; police misconduct; wrongful conviction; human trafficking; international human rights; and disability rights. CRLC students are involved in all aspects of clinic cases including evaluation of potential cases; interviewing potential clients; drafting of initial pleadings; the discovery and motion process; trial preparation and work in appellate briefs, including Supreme Court briefs.

This semester, students are working with the Arizona ACLU on a major First Amendment protest case; working on a wrongful conviction appeal in the California Court of Appeal; preparing a Brief in Opposition to a Certiorari Petition in the U.S. Supreme Court in a child slave labor case; and preparing complaints in a jail suicide case and the death of an immigrant in ICE custody. The Puente v. City of Phoenix case involves the violent disruption of a peaceful demonstration by means of munitions and tear gas allegedly because of the activities of a small group of disruptive protestors. The case seeks policy changes and damages on behalf of a certified class. In the first semester of this clinic, students are defending depositions and preparing for summary judgment motions and trial.

The Community and Economic Development Clinic (CED) expanded its water justice practice this year with the addition of Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor Camille Pannu. Prior to joining UCI, Prof. Pannu was the Director of the Aoki Water Justice Clinic at UC Davis School of Law, a clinic that she founded in 2016. CED Clinic students have partnered with communities that lack access to affordable, safe drinking water to secure state funding and replace their drinking water systems. The unincorporated community of Six Acres is adjacent to the City of Cloverdale, California and has independently operated its water system for over 60 years. As its system has aged, it has become too expensive for the community to replace its infrastructure on its own. After three years of community engagement sessions, Six Acres and the City have agreed to explore the possibility of merging their systems.

Students this year are working with the Six Acres community to create a pre-annexation agreement with the City of Cloverdale, to support Six Acres’ application for state funding, and to revive the water system’s corporate status. Because small, rural communities cannot afford legal services to implement water justice projects, special funding programs and solutions are often beyond their reach. The clinic’s work this year fills that gap in services, making it the second clinic in the country to use transactional tools to address racial and socioeconomic barriers to accessing safe drinking water.

During the last year of the Consumer Law Clinic (CLC), students have been combating a new deceptive home improvement equity-stripping scheme through litigation and policy advocacy. This fall, a team of student attorneys successfully argued and obtained a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to stay arbitration. The CLC has been inundated with senior citizens facing imminent risk of foreclosure due to this predatory lending product. In addition to direct representation, students have conducted community outreach and education presentations to prevent even more homeowners from being misled and to stem additional foreclosures. 

Caption: Student Matthew Ketcham presenting to attorneys with the California Association of Realtors in Los Angeles.

In addition, the CLC has been engaged in a multi-school clinic project researching and drafting policy to address the escalating student debt crisis. UCI students meet bi-weekly with students from the University of Minnesota and the University of Notre Dame to consult with experts in the field.

The students have been working to change unfair collection practices and Patrick Hulbert ’20 recently argued before the California Court of Appeals on behalf of an older adult. 

Caption: One of our bi-weekly expert consultation calls with this one featuring Director, Producer & Writer of Fail State, Alexander Shebanow.

The Immigrant Rights Clinic (IRC) and the Criminal Justice Clinic (CJC) are at the forefront of the development of post-conviction relief to aid noncitizen individuals in undoing the devastating impact of old criminal convictions. In 2018-19, the clinics jointly received a California state grant to pioneer new post-conviction remedies in state criminal court for noncitizen defendants who face deportation and removal as a result of their past—and often minor and remote—criminal offenses.

Together, IRC and CJC represent noncitizen clients who seek to undo these convictions in criminal court due to legal errors in their cases that resulted in the clients’ pleading guilty without knowing the adverse immigration consequences of their plea. IRC and CJC have successfully represented over 20 individuals in post-conviction relief and have served as a model and resource to private attorneys and non-profit legal organizations doing post-conviction work statewide. The clinics are now turning their attention towards preventing such legal errors in the future. The clinics are engaged in advocacy work with local community-based organizations to ensure that all individuals who are in the criminal court system have access to a lawyer who will provide critical information regarding potential immigration consequences as well as serve as an advocate on their behalf to avoid such drastic and disproportionate consequences.

Caption: Criminal Justice Clinic client Arturo C. (right) with his family.

The Criminal Justice Clinic fights for elderly federal prisoners who are serving lengthy prison offenses for non-violent drug crimes to be able to return home to their families. CJC is celebrating the grant of “compassionate release” for client Arturo C., a 69-year-old man who had served over 30 years in prison as part of a mandatory life sentence for a non-violent drug offense—a sentence he would not receive for the same crime today. Over several years, CJC assisted Arturo in seeking relief from his life sentence, through vehicles including a clemency petition, a petition before the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and most recently, a petition under the recently expanded definition of “compassionate release” under the First Step Act. This past summer, a federal judge ordered Arturo’s immediate release from prison. To our knowledge, Arturo C. was the second individual in the entire country to receive compassionate release on non-terminal illness grounds under the First Step Act. CJC is now working to secure the release of additional elderly federal prisoners and to support prisoners pro se efforts across the country to be granted compassionate release.

In addition to its post-conviction work with the CJC, Immigrant Rights Clinic students have recently been part of the response effort to the largest immigrant workplace raids in a decade. On Aug. 7, 2019, U.S. immigration officials raided a number of food processing plants in Mississippi, arresting approximately 680 workers in total. Working closely with advocates on the ground, one student team is engaged in remote representation of a Guatemalan asylum-seeker in his request to be released from ICE detention in Louisiana while his case is pending. Students will argue that his detention is unnecessary, as he had been checking in regularly with immigration officials before the raid. Another IRC student team is working with a criminal defense attorney and the local Federal Public Defender’s Office to defend one of the workers in a criminal prosecution by challenging the manner in which the raids were conducted. Specifically, the students will argue that any evidence obtained in violation of the worker’s Fourth Amendment rights should be suppressed.

The UCI Law Domestic Violence Clinic (DVC) has many amazing stories of serving clients in crisis in comprehensive and transformative ways. In addition to representing clients in family court and immigration matters, recent work has included domestic and international child abduction cases, amicus briefs, #MeToo community education, and co-counseling an appeal.

The need for an appeal arose when a UCI Law Domestic Violence Clinic client was wrongly denied a restraining order after trial. The DVC was concerned about the court’s erroneous ruling and our client’s need for protection from abuse, and co-counseled an appeal with the Family Violence Appellate Project. The appellate court in NT v. HT (G055885) ruled in our client’s favor and made important determinations about the law, which will positively impact abuse survivors in California.

Caption: Left to right: Prof. Jane Stoever (Director, Domestic Violence Clinic), Shuray Ghorishi (Senior Attorney, Family Violence Appellate Project), Julia Taing (2L, DVC Law Intern), and Erika Bertelsen (3L, DVC Law Intern).

After our client filed for a Domestic Violence Restraining Order (DVRO) against her husband, the court awarded a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) and set a hearing to determine if a permanent DVRO should issue. The survivor’s husband violated the TRO multiple times, including repeatedly using visitation exchanges to try to coerce our client into returning to the relationship, locating and appearing at her confidential address (as witnessed and photographed by our client’s friend), and giving her a spiritually abusive letter. Her husband did not deny any of the violations and admitted to most of them; however, the trial court denied the request for a DVRO, concluding that violating a TRO is not in and of itself abuse and that the violations were only “technical.”

The California Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District Division Three issued a strong opinion reversing the denial of the DVRO. First, it held the trial court erred in ruling that a violation of a TRO was not itself an act of abuse because the Domestic Violence Prevention Act defines abuse as “engag[ing] in any behavior that has been or could be enjoined pursuant to Section 6320,” and the record was replete with examples of the husband’s behaviors that had been enjoined. Second, it held the trial court erred in ruling the alleged conduct would not independently constitute abuse. We are inspired by our client’s courage and persistence in seeking court protection and by our students’ incredible advocacy from the trial court through the appeal! Our publication request in NT v. HT was granted, meaning the opinion has long-lasting impact for domestic abuse survivors in California.

Nine years after its founding as one of UCI’s inaugural clinics, the  Environmental Law Clinic (ELC) continues to provide legal services to clients seeking to enhance environmental health, promote environmental justice, and conserve, restore, and protect natural resources. This academic year, the ELC is working on behalf of several clients fighting for protection and the equitable governance of California’s coast.

Working alongside Azul, a grassroots, ocean protection organization led by and serving the Latinx community, the ELC engaged the California Coastal Commission during its development of the agency’s first-ever Environmental Justice Policy. Azul and the ELC secured the adoption of a policy in March of 2019 that commits the agency to meaningful engagement of environmental justice communities in agency processes, and careful consideration of environmental justice concerns during all agency actions. This semester, Azul and ELC are working to ensure the robust implementation of the Environmental Justice Policy in matters before the Commission, and environmental justice in coastal decision-making.

In another matter, the ELC is working with advocates in Orange County to protect and enhance public access in Newport Harbor. Home to over 9,000 boats, Newport is one of the largest recreational harbors on the West Coast. However, affordable recreation opportunities are limited. The ELC is working to ensure public docks, slips, and beaches remain accessible for all users, and that proposed changes to public accessibility and uses are made through the proper regulatory processes.

Issues involving environmental justice and coastal access, like environmental and natural resource issues more generally, concern a myriad of legal authorities, scientific data, agency decision makers, and stakeholder engagement, requiring complex analyses. ELC students take on matters as “first chair” attorneys, meaning they are responsible for mastering all of the factual and legal issues necessary to help clients to achieve their goals. Through this experience, the ELC is training students to provide holistic representation for their clients, while advancing the public interest in environmental protection, environmental justice, and natural resource conservation.

The Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic (IPAT) recently received a grant of $450,000 from the Legal Clinic Fund, a collaborative fund housed at The Miami Foundation, to support its press freedom and transparency work. The grant will fund free legal services to independent journalists and media organizations in California. Susan E. Seager, a veteran First Amendment litigator, former journalist, and staff attorney at the UCI Law IPAT Clinic, will lead this practice. The UCI Law IPAT Clinic is the first and only clinic on the West Coast with a practice dedicated specifically to press freedom and transparency.

In just the first few months since this transformative award, the IPAT Clinic’s Press Freedom and Transparency team has gone into court to fight for openness and against secrecy in several courts across California. The clinic’s advocacy, along with extensive counseling services, has contributed to the publication of blockbuster stories in several prominent publications.

Among other achievements, the team has unsealed court records related to the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Service’s failure to protect children who are alleged to have died from abuse by family members. Students are also fighting to gain access to government records on matters ranging from U.S. immigration detentions to multi-million dollar government building projects, using both the California Public Records Act and the federal Freedom of Information Act.

Caption: Members of UCI Law's IPAT Clinic

The International Justice Clinic (IJC) supports freedom of expression worldwide, working with the United Nations, civil society activists and human rights defenders, and even governments on issues ranging from the safety of journalists to the regulation of speech online. Student teams have traveled to Ecuador, Turkey, Tajikistan, Japan and other countries to assess the changing rules around media freedom and the internet, urging compliance with fundamental rules of international human rights law. They have researched and helped draft major reports on encryption, the protection of whistleblowers, artificial intelligence, internet shutdowns, and the private surveillance industry, to name a few, and joined in their presentation to the United Nations in Geneva and New York. Students regularly draft letters to governments and to companies, and amicus filings in regional human rights courts, urging that States and businesses comply with their international obligations and responsibilities and respect human rights. They attend major digital rights conferences around the world, from Brussels to Tunis to Berlin. Meanwhile, IJC also supports groundbreaking efforts to establish human rights frameworks at the local and state levels in California. Our goal is to train students in the tools, the law, and the venues for human rights advocacy wherever rights are under threat.