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When Civil Rights Enforcement Fades: The Cost of a Government That Refuses to Protect Workers

Civil rights in the workplace are not theoretical ideals. They are everyday guarantees that determine whether a person can go to work and expect to …

When the Federal Government Steps Back, Who Protects Civil Rights

Civil rights do not enforce themselves. They are not self-executing clauses written into the Constitution that automatically produce justice. Civil rights depend on systems of …

Buying Bias: How Private Money Skews Policing and Undermines Trust

Public policing should answer to the public. When private money enters policing, the line between public interest and private influence can blur. New research has …

A Jury Speaks: The Price of Protest and the Power of Civil Action

When people take to the streets to protest, they exercise a fundamental American right. Peaceful protest is messy, noisy, and sometimes inconvenient. That is the …

Behind Bars, Beyond Justice: What the Marcy Prison Trial Says About Institutional Brutality

When people speak of the failures of the criminal justice system, they often point to policing. That focus is necessary, but it must not close …

The Fight for Fair Representation: What the Supreme Court Review of the Voting Rights Act Means for Communities of Color

The right to vote is the backbone of every other civil right. If that right is hollow, everything else tumbles. This week, the Supreme Court …

When Speech Meets Violence: Why the Constitution Demands Better

What Happened On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk, a well-known conservative commentator and activist, was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. …

Justice in Focus: An Update on the Victor Perez Case

The Case That Shocked a Community In April 2025, tragedy unfolded in Pocatello, Idaho. Police were dispatched to a call involving 17-year-old Victor Perez, a …

John Burris: Now Part of Civil-Rights History at the Library of Congress

Some lawyers make headlines. Few make history. John Leonard Burris just did both. The HistoryMakers, the nation’s largest African American video oral history archive, …

Case Results

Reginald Oliver v. City of Oakland

Oakland Police keep fabricating evidence and lying about minorities to arrest and prosecute them for supposed “gang” crimes, in violation of a settlement that prohibits …

Named plaintiff Reginald Oliver claims the Oakland PD continues violating the Constitution, in defiance of the settlement in Delphine Allen e al. v. City of Oakland, USDC No. C-00-4599 TEH, also known as "The Riders" litigation. Read Full Course

Jane Smith v. City of Oakland

Racial profiling of Asian women by police officer resulting in a class action complaint for damages, declaratory and injunctive relief

Finding evidence about defendant's post-conviction parole violation unfairly prejudicial "since the jury could have construed that parole violation as character evidence in violation of Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b)" Read Full Course

Rodney King v. City of Los Angeles

Rodney King has filed a petition for a writ of mandamus seeking to have Judge John G. Davies disqualified from presiding at the trial of …

Rodney King waited too long to file a malpractice suit against the first of 27 lawyers who represented him in connection with the infamous beating he suffered from Los Angeles police in 1991, this district’s Court of Appeal ruled yesterday. The ruling by Div. Two affirmed Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ann Kough’s grant of summary judgment to Steven Lerman. King earlier this year dismissed his appeal of Kough’s ruling in favor of two other lawyers sued in the case, Federico Sayre and John Burris. Read Full Course

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Civil rights lawyer John Burris confronts police narratives

John Burris Video 2020

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