Staff Attorneys Receive Awards for their Public Interest Work

Chris Ho receives 2004 CLAY Award and Pat Shiu honored by Asian American Bar Association

Senior Staff Attorney Christopher Ho received a California Lawyer of the Year (CLAY) Award in Employment Law for 2004. The CLAY Awards are given annually by California Lawyer magazine to attorneys "whose work has had a profound, far-reaching impact in 2004 or whose achievements in 2004 are expected to have such an impact in the coming years." At a ceremony on March 7, 2005 in San Francisco, Chris and other recipients were presented with their awards by California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George.

Chris is Director of the Immigration, National Origin, and Language Rights Program. The CLAY award recognizes his work in 2004 on two immigrants' rights cases. In Singh v. Jutla, Chris, along with co-trial counsel Diane Webb and Bill Friedman of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, won a federal jury verdict of $200,000 in compensatory and punitive damages for Macan Singh, an undocumented worker whose employer retaliatorily reported him to the INS because he filed a claim for three years of unpaid wages. (The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) was also counsel in the case.) The CLAY award also recognizes Chris's role as lead counsel in Rivera v. NIBCO, Inc., in which the Society is representing a group of 23 Southeast Asian and Latina women manufacturing workers who allege language-based discrimination against their Fresno employer. Earlier this month, the United States Supreme Court declined to review a precedent-setting Ninth Circuit opinion in the Rivera case which sharply limited the ability of employers to undertake invasive and intimidating inquiries into the immigration status of employees during the course of discovery. Co-counsel in Rivera are NILC, W.J. Smith and Associates, the Asian Law Caucus, and Minami, Lew & Tamaki LLP.

"Although I'm certainly pleased by this award," Chris commented, "I look at it more as a tribute not only to LAS-ELC as an organization, which makes it possible to take on these challenging issues in the first place, but also to my colleagues on these and other immigrants' rights cases, whose vision, commitment, and hard work I value very deeply."

Pat Shiu, Vice President of Programs and Director of the Gender Equality Program was honored on March 18 by the Asian American Bar Association with its Joe Morozumi Lifetime Achievement Award. The Joe Morozumi Award recognizes Asian American attorneys that embody the "spirit of uncomprising legal advocacy in matters of conscience," according to award founder, Dale Minami. Pat has devoted her remarkable public interest career of 21 years to ensuring that poor women, particularly immigrants, women of color, single mothers, and those who are disabled are treated legally, fairly and with dignity. Recently her cases have included a challenge to discrimination and harassment in police departments and other nontraditional workplaces; the denial of paid family to a worker who son was dying of AIDS and another whose mother was terminally ill; and the payment of lesser wages to women working in jobs just above the minimum wage. A longtime authority on the workplace rights of domestic violence survivors, Pat also directs the Domestic Violence and Employment Project. She recently successfully secured a settlement on behalf of a domestic violence survivor whose employer refused to transfer her to a work site away from the reach of her abuser, who was also her husband and co-worker.



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