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Charting the Path Forward: Civil Rights, Education, and DEI (Lawyers’ Committee Newsletter May 2025)

May marked a powerful month of remembrance, advocacy, and renewed commitment for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. We honored National Law Day and Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, commemorated the 71st anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, and reflected on the 5th anniversary of George Floyd’s death—each a reminder of the enduring fight for racial justice, educational equity, and systemic reform.

This month also called attention to the urgent challenges we continue to face—from rising threats to democracy and educational access, to the erosion of DEIA protections and accountability in law enforcement. While we recognize the hard-won progress of the past, we remain steadfast in our work to safeguard civil rights and advance a multiracial democracy rooted in justice and equality.

In this issue, you’ll find critical legal updates, highlights from recent media coverage, and ways to support our mission. Together, we move the road forward.

Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

In May, we proudly celebrated Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, honoring the enduring legacy of resistance, solidarity, and civil rights leadership within AAPI communities. From challenging exclusionary laws to forging powerful alliances in multiracial justice movements, AAPI leaders have been—and continue to be—essential in the fight for equity and human dignity.

At the Lawyers’ Committee, we remain deeply committed to advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA). We are unwavering in our pursuit of a future where every person—regardless of race, religion, heritage, or background—has an equal voice, equal access, and equal rights under the law.

71st anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education

On May 17, the Lawyers’ Committee commemorated the 71st anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education—the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared school segregation unconstitutional. Brown not only ignited the movement for educational equity, but also laid the foundation for progress in housing, higher education, and economic justice.

While Brown reshaped the legal landscape, the promise of equal education remains unfulfilled for far too many. Today, we continue that fight, challenging systemic barriers and advocating for every student’s right to a quality education. Join us as we press forward in the ongoing struggle for educational justice.

Reflections: 5th anniversary of George Floyd’s death

On May 25, the Lawyers’ Committee marked five years since the death of George Floyd, whose killing became a global catalyst for the modern movement against police brutality and racial injustice. As we honored his memory, we reflected on the deepened urgency of our work to advance racial justice, demand police accountability, and push for lasting systemic reform.

George Floyd’s death remains a defining moment in the ongoing fight for equity—a moment that continues to inform our advocacy, strengthen our resolve, and shape the legacy of our pursuit for justice.

Official Statements & Press Releases

  • Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Names Shaylyn Cochran as Deputy Executive Director | May 2, 2025 | Read more

  • Three New Advocates Join Lawyers’ Committee to Advance Work on Criminal Justice, Technology, and Education| May 15, 2025 | Read more

Lawyers’ Committee President and Executive Director Damon Hewitt Featured on the Jesse Jackson Jr. Show

On May 2, 2025, The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law President and Executive Director Damon Hewitt discusses the current civil rights landscape, issues, and setbacks on the Jesse Jackson Jr. Show. 

“Every organization has to ask themselves right now, what is our organization going to be about in this moment, how are we showing up in the fight and meeting the moment, and what we have to do is meet the moment together. We have to make sure always that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We are committed to going together.” – Damon Hewitt

Watch the full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcYSw0GjnDY

Lawyers’ Committee Voting Rights Project Director Robert Weiner’s COURIER Op-Ed

This month, a new op-ed from the Lawyers’ Committee’s Voting Rights Director Robert Weinerwas shared onCourier’s newsroom. The op-ed, titled “Robert Weiner: The Trump Administration is Set on Solving on Nonissue–and Millions Could Lose the Right to Vote,” dove deeper into recent executive orders working to corrode and complicate voting rights for Americans. 

Regarding the president and Administration’s recent voting rights actions, the article states: “The systematic effort is not merely to discredit an electoral process that is not broken but to actually break it, and it begs the question of what the President is trying to achieve.”

Read the full article now: https://tinyurl.com/3nr2ypm2

Key Stories Shaping the Legal and Policy Landscape (May Roundup)

With evolving civil rights leadership, pressing civil rights issues coming to the forefront, and extensive proceedings for criminal justice, racial justice, education, and DEI, May was vital for civil rights litigation and advocacy. Here are some of the key stories from May that are shaping the legal and policy landscape:

Civil Rights Leadership in Action

  • Playbook: Dems’ Surprising New Litmus Test:TheLawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law has added Leah Frazier as director of its digital justice initiative, Maya Raghu as national director of its protecting and advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative, and Len Kamdang as director of its criminal justice project. POLITICO (Nat) (May 16)
  • Pope Leo XIV: A Chicago Native Makes Vatican History: “The first American Pope has been named at a critical time for the Catholic Church, and for the world,” Damon T. Hewitt, the President and Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told Black Press USA. “People across this nation and worldwide are in need of compassionate moral leadership,” stated Hewitt, who was raised a Catholic in New Orleans. “That, plus the sheer force of will of people of conscience might be the only thing that can counterbalance the ugly trend of racism, xenophobia, and authoritarianism that is plaguing our planet.” BlackPressUSA (Nat) (May 8)
  • Playbook PM: Moderates and Fiscal Hawks Dig In: Shaylyn Cochran has been named deputy executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She was most recently deputy chief of staff and senior counselor to AG Merrick Garland. POLITICO (Nat) (May 7) 
  • Washington DC’s 500 Most Influential People of 2025: Damon Todd Hewitt of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law was named one of Washington DC’s most influential people in civil rights & criminal justice. Washingtonian Magazine (DC) (May 7)

Federal Threats to Civil Rights

  • Under Trump, the Division Formerly Known as ‘Civil Rights’ is in Peril:Robert Weiner formerly served as senior counsel in the front office of the civil rights division of the Department of Justice. He is now director of the Voting Rights Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. The Hill (Nat) (May 20)Yahoo News (May 20) 
  • Trump Guts Civil Rights Guidelines: Responding to the Trump Executive Order, Dariely Rodriguez, the acting co-chief counsel for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, declared “This order aims to destroy the foundation of civil rights protections in this country, and it will have a devastating effect on equity for Black people and other communities of color,” which is clearly the intent of the Trump Administration. Daily Kos (Nat) (May 14)
  • Trump Seeks to Strip Away Legal Tool Key to Civil Rights Enforcement: “This order aims to destroy the foundation of civil rights protections in this country, and it will have a devastating effect on equity for Black people and other communities of color,” said Dariely Rodriguez, the acting co-chief counsel at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, an advocacy group.Boston Globe (MA) (May 10)New York Times (Nat) (May 9) 
  • Lawyers’ Committee Condemns Trump’s Executive Orders Targeting Civil Rights: The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law has issued a condemnation of a series of recent executive orders from President Trump, calling them a coordinated effort to roll back decades of civil rights protections. In a statement released this week, the organization accused the Trump administration of “weaponizing the law against the very communities it was designed to protect,” by distorting the legal doctrine of disparate impact across sectors including housing, employment, education, and lending. The People’s Vanguard of Davis (CA) (May 2) 

Citizenship on the Line: Legal Stakes in Birthright Battle

  • Trump Birthright Merits Are Key to Justices’ Look at Injunctions: And it’s why the merits of the underlying dispute should come into play, even in a discussion about a procedural issue, said Olivia Sedwick, of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.  In a case of this magnitude, which will literally affect everyone and upend our understanding of citizenship, “the utility of a nationwide injunction, to me, couldn’t be more appropriate,” Sedwick said. “We’re not just dealing with remote academic procedural questions,” she said. “These are questions that have very real-time effects on real people.” Bloomberg Law (Nat) (May 14)

Civil Rights on the Brink: Racial & Criminal Justice Under Threat

  • Trump Administration Tells State Regulators It Won’t Back Some Discrimination Claims: “They are consistently eroding the protections from the 1964 Civil Rights Act and other foundational civil rights laws in this country, and undermining the rights of particular communities,” said Maya Raghu, a director at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, an advocacy group. New York Times (Nat) (May 27)
  • DOJ Abandons Effort to Address Phoenix’s Treatment of Homeless People: The report’s retraction, along with last year’s Supreme Court decision allowing cities to arrest and cite people for sleeping outside even when they have nowhere else to go, could further embolden cities and police departments to marginalize homeless people, said Brook Hill, senior counsel with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a legal advocacy group that focuses on racial justice issues. “They will feel like they have a license to do the sweeps and to otherwise make life in public view uncomfortable for unhoused people,” he said. ProPublica (Nat) (May 23)
  • Justice Department to End Oversight of Local Police Accused of Abuses:Civil rights advocates took fault with the department’s actions and its new targets. “This administration is telling us exactly who and what it is,” said Damon Hewitt, the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, “but also who it prioritizes, and whom it is willing to disregard.” New York Times (Nat) (May 21)
  • The Lead Up of the Five-Year Anniversary of George Floyd:Damon Hewitt, President and Executive Director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law tells Black Press USA President Trump’s anticipated actions against protesters is “the legal process equivalent to wiping out Black Lives Matter Plaza.” Hewitt went on to say, “It’s another way of saying Black lives do not matter.” BlackPressUSA (Nat) (May 16)
  • Beyond Dialogue: Igniting Racial Justice in a Shifting Political Landscape: Featuring insights from Annette Martínez (executive director of the American Civil Rights Union or ACLU of Puerto Rico), Leah Watson (senior staff attorney of ACLU’s Racial Justice Program), and Dariely Rodriguez of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the discussion highlighted current threats, necessary defenses, and proactive measures. Nonprofit Quarterly (Nat) (May 8)

Education Equity Watch: DEI, Civil Rights & the Courts

  • What 100 Ed. Dept. Investigations Say About Trump’s Agenda for Schools:“The Department of Education is simultaneously the most dangerous in its exercise of power and the most useless in its availability for enforcing the civil rights complaints than it has ever been,” said Michael Pillera, a former investigator in the Education Department’s office for civil rights and now the director of the educational opportunities project for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonprofit that advocates for racial justice. Ed Week (Nat) (May 22)
  • Editorial: D.E.I + D.I.L = ECR (Erasure of Civil Rights): We agree wholeheartedly with Dariely Rodriguez, acting co-chief at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, that “this order aims to destroy the foundation of civil rights protections in this country, and it will have a devastating effect on equity for Black people and other communities of color.” Amsterdam News (NY) (May 15)
  • How Proposed Changes to Higher Education Accreditation Could Impact Campus Diversity Efforts: The ruling has nonetheless been a point of contention in the debate over diversity, equity, and inclusion. The American Association of University Professors and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law have denounced the executive order. The groups argue that it threatens to politicize accreditation and suppress efforts to promote equity and inclusion. MSN (May 8)Yahoo News (May 8)
  • Parsons Corp. Quietly Cut Its Award-Winning DEI Program: Sabrina Talukder, senior counsel at the Economic Justice Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement that the injunction will help Chicago Women in Trades challenge enforcement of Trump’s orders, which target “the very nature of” its mission and its critical work in “dismantling barriers for women, especially women of color, in the skilled trades.” Engineering News-Record (Nat) (May 6) 
  • A Gutted Education Department’s New Agenda: Roll Back Civil Rights, Target Transgender Students: As with civil rights divisions in other federal agencies that the Trump administration has fundamentally altered, the OCR has worked for decades to uphold constitutional rights against discrimination based on disability, race, and gender. “OCR is the most useless it’s ever been, and it’s the most dangerous it’s ever been. And by useless, I mean unavailable. Unable to do the work,” said Michael Pillera, who until recently was an OCR attorney in Washington, D.C. He is now with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Times of San Diego (CA) (May 3)ProPublica (Nat) (May 2)
  • Fifth Circuit Examines UT Austin After Affirmative Action’s End: Sumayya Saleh, an attorney for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, also argued on behalf of intervening students and student groups who want to keep lawful ways of promoting diversity on the campus. She said that even if other institutions like Harvard and the University of North Carolina, which were the subjects of the Supreme Court litigation, agreed to firewall race and ethnicity data from admissions officers as part of agreements with SFFA, that doesn’t mean the group can obtain a court order implementing such a firewall. “At the end of the day, it’s not legally required and it’s not something they’re legally entitled to,” Saleh said. Bloomberg Law (Nat) (May 1) Courthouse News Service (Nat) (May 1)

The fight for equity and justice continues, with ongoing legal battles and policy changes shaping the future. Which of these stories stood out to you the most? Let’s discuss it in the comments.👇

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Events (June)

This June, we recognize and celebrate several powerful milestones and observances that reflect our mission and history:

  • Pride Month – Honoring the ongoing struggle for LGBTQ+ rights and inclusion.
  • Father’s Day (June 15) – Celebrating fatherhood, caregiving, and family.
  • Juneteenth (June 19) – Commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S. and the ongoing pursuit of Black freedom.
  • 62nd Anniversary of the Lawyers’ Committee’s Founding (June 21) – Reflecting on our legacy of legal advocacy for racial justice.
  • 61st Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (June 26) – Marking a landmark victory in the fight for equality and civil rights.

Together, these moments shape a powerful month of reflection, pride, and recommitment to justice.

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The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to mobilize the nation’s leading lawyers as agents for change in the Civil Rights Movement. Today, the Lawyers’ Committee uses legal advocacy to achieve racial justice, fighting inside and outside the courts to ensure that Black people and other people of color have the voice, opportunity, and power to make the promises of our democracy real. The Lawyers’ Committee implements its mission and objectives by marshaling the pro bono resources of the bar for litigation, public policy, advocacy and other forms of service by lawyers to the cause of civil rights.