2nd Annual Pace Access to Justice Workshop: Voting, Democracy, and the Law
The Public Interest Law Center’s Access to Justice Project
at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University
Presents the 2nd Annual
PACE ACCESS TO JUSTICE WORKSHOP:
Voting, Democracy, and the Law
Wednesday, March 29, 2023 | 12:15 - 1:45 p.m.
ELISABETH HAUB SCHOOL OF LAW
Tudor Room, 78 N. Broadway, White Plains, NY
In-Person Event | Panel Discussion Available Via Zoom
The second annual Pace Access to Justice Workshop will bring together leading voting rights lawyers, advocates, and the Haub Law community on the important issues of voting access, elections, and democracy. The workshop will feature a panel discussion with voting rights experts from the ACLU, New York Civil Liberties Union, VoteEarlyNY, and Generation Vote, with a special video message from March For Our Lives Founder and Activist David Hogg followed by an interactive community discussion about our institutional role in voting access and engagement.
MODERATOR:
Elyse Diamond, Director, Public Interest Law Center
Adjunct Professor of Law, Elisabeth Haub School of Law
Elyse Diamond is the Director of the Public Interest Law Center (PILC) and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Pace University’s Elisabeth Haub School of Law. As PILC’s Director, Elyse leads the law school’s Access to Justice Project (Pace A2J), which includes a range of curricular and non-curricular initiatives, including coordinating the launch of the Legal Hand Call-In Center serving Westchester operated at Haub Law, and she also manages the public service career and professional development programming and advising strategy and efforts for the law school. Along with the now-added guided externship for Legal Hand law student Volunteers, Elyse currently teaches Legal Skills I and II, the Haub Law’s Access to Justice Writing Seminar, and co-teaches the interdisciplinary Access to Justice Lab, which guides law and University design and computer science students to apply a human-centered process to design in building the prototype for a technology tool to address a local access to justice issue. Elyse is currently a member (2021-23) of Equal Justice Works National Advisory Council. serves on the Board for the Hudson Valley Justice Center, and is member of AALS, NALP and other related public service law organizations and committees.
PANELISTS:
Jarret Berg, Co-Founder, VoteEarlyNY
Jarret Berg is an attorney and voting rights advocate with a passion for protecting and advancing civil and political rights. Berg Co-Founded the nonpartisan election watchdog VoteEarlyNY to inform communities about their voting rights, advocate for modern, accessible election policy, and ensure that recently-enacted voting reforms are being implemented responsibly. As the former Executive Director of the New York Democratic Lawyers Council (NYDLC), Berg served as statewide Voter Protection Director from 2016-2018 and has participated in election monitoring programs in several states since 2012. Berg is focused on raising awareness about voting rights, threats to the rule of law, and the need to advance human rights norms to protect vulnerable communities.
Brianna Cea, Founder and Executive Director, Generation Vote
A skilled youth organizer and voting rights advocate, Brianna Cea is passionate about empowering young people in the political process and expanding youth voting rights. As CEO/Co-founder of Generation Vote, Brianna educates, mobilizes and connects young people to become agents of change in local electoral and advocacy campaigns through the GenVote Model of Engagement. Brianna is also the Co-Chair of the Let NY Vote Youth Voting Rights Working Group, the largest voting rights coalition in New York State and responsible for passing the first NY voter reform laws in over 100 years.
Brianna was a research and program associate at the Brennan Center for Justice At the Brennan Center, where she focused on the census and redistricting. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Atlantic, SCOTUSblog and other outlets. Brianna is also involved with the Roosevelt Institute Alumni Network, where she serves as a Forge Fellowship Mentor, and sits on the Board for OCA-Asian Pacific Advocates NY.
Brianna graduated summa cum laude with a BA in political science and philosophy, politics and law from Binghamton University in May 2018. While on campus, she was a Newman Civic Fellow, served as the Regional Coordinator for the Roosevelt Institute Lower Northeast Region, founded Roosevelt Institute at Binghamton University and the Broome County Student Board of Advisors, and interned with the New York Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery and Tenant Protection Unit.
Perry Grossman, Supervising Attorney, New York Civil Liberties Union (Voting rights, Election law litigation, Advocacy)
Perry Grossman is a Supervising Attorney whose work focuses primarily on litigation and advocacy efforts concerning voting rights and election law issues. At the NYCLU, Perry’s cases have included New York Immigration Coalition v. U.S. Department of Commerce and New York Immigration Coalition v. Trump, the successful challenges to the Trump Administration’s efforts to put a citizenship question on the 2020 Census and to exclude undocumented immigrants from Congressional apportionment, respectively; NAACP v. East Ramapo Central School District, a successful racial vote dilution case brought under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act; Hotze v. Hollins, a successful intervention to prevent the disenfranchisement of 127,000 voters in Harris County, Texas who cast their ballots using drive-thru voting in the 2020 election; and successful cases protecting equitable access to early voting for voters in Rockland and Rensselaer Counties.
Perry was also counsel of record for the ACLU on amicus briefs in Gill v. Whitford, a partisan gerrymandering case and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a Second Amendment challenge to New York’s regulations on carrying concealed handguns. Perry regularly testifies before state and local legislative bodies concerning voting rights and election administration. He also teaches a seminar on voting rights as an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School and is is an occasional contributor to Slate on legal issues.
Perry is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Swarthmore College. He was a law clerk for the Hon. Barry G. Silverman of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Sophia Lin Lakin, Interim Co-Director, ACLU Voting Rights Project
Sophia Lin Lakin is the Interim Co-Director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, and assists in the planning, strategy and supervision of the ACLU’s voting rights litigation nationwide. Sophia has an active docket protecting voting rights and combatting voter suppression across the country and has led or worked on successful challenges to discriminatory voting laws in Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia. Currently, Sophia is lead counsel in Alpha Phi Alpha v. Raffensperger, a redistricting challenge to Georgia’s state legislative maps, Arkansas State Conference NAACP v. Arkansas Board of Apportionment, a redistricting challenge to Arkansas’s state House plan, and the ACLU’s lead counsel in Sixth District of The African Methodist Episcopal Church v. Kemp, a federal lawsuit challenging multiple provisions of Georgia’s sweeping new voter suppression law S.B. 202. Her other cases have included: Common Cause Indiana v. Sullivan (lead counsel in case successfully challenging an unlawful purge program in Indiana); Hotze v. Hollins (co-lead counsel in case defending against attack on the use of drive-thru voting in Harris County, Texas); Trump Campaign v. Boockvar (represented voters against attempt to block certification of 2020 presidential election results); Texas v. Crystal Mason (representing Ms. Mason in her appeal of her conviction and 5-year sentence for allegedly improperly casting a provisional ballot); Missouri NAACP v. Missouri (lead counsel in case challenging the in-person notary requirement for mail voting in Missouri during the COVID-19 pandemic, which she argued before the Missouri Supreme Court twice); League of Women Voters of Tennessee v. Hargett (co-lead counsel in successful challenge to a Tennessee law that imposed onerous requirements and substantial criminal and civil penalties on community based organizations that conduct voter registration drives); and Fish v. Kobach (successful challenge to the documentation requirements for voter registration in Kansas).
Sophia has testified on election law issues before Congress and has presented at conferences and conducted voting rights trainings nationwide. She is a frequent commentator on voting rights issues, appearing on television programs including The 11th Hour; and has written opinion pieces for The Hill and The Boston Globe.
Before joining the ACLU, Sophia clerked for the Honorable Raymond J. Lohier, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Honorable Carol Bagley Amon of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Sophia received her J.D. from Stanford Law School. She also received her M.S. in Management Science & Engineering and B.A. in Political Science from Stanford University.
SPECIAL VIDEO MESSAGE:
David Hogg, Co-Founder, March For Our Lives
Thrust into the world of activism by the largest school shooting in American history, Parkland survivor David Hogg has become one of the most compelling voices of his generation. His call to “get over politics and get something done” challenges Americans to stand up, speak out and work to elect morally just leaders, regardless of party affiliation. Passionate in his advocacy to end gun violence, David’s mission of increasing voter participation, civic engagement and activism embraces a range of issues.
On February 14, 2018, David’s life changed forever. As a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, he lost friends, classmates and teachers. A total of 17 people were killed when a lone teen gunman sprayed bullets from a high-powered military assault rifle. David’s eloquent responses to America’s largest school shooting immediately placed him in the national and international media spotlight. Committed to becoming an agent for change, he resolved that no other young person should have to experience the tragic impact of gun violence. He joined with friends from high school to co-found March For Our Lives, now one of the world’s largest youth-led movements. Five weeks after the shooting, March for Our Lives mobilized one of the biggest demonstrations in the nation’s history. Speaking before an estimated 800,000 protestors in Washington, D.C., David declared, “The sun shines on a new day- and it is ours!” Since then, David’s activism has taken him around the country, meeting with impacted families and diverse communities to deepen his knowledge of gun safety and the politics of ending gun violence. With his younger sister, Lauren, also a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, he cowrote #NeverAgain, a New York Timesbestseller. David and Lauren also contributed to the best-selling book, Glimmer of Hope: How Tragedy Sparked a Movement, a compilation of writing from the founders of March For Our Lives.
A prolific voice on social media with more than a million followers, David uses his platform to promote civic engagement, activism and voting. As a speaker, he informs, challenges and energizes, empowering his generation to resist apathy and become catalysts for positive social change. “People call us snowflakes,” he once tweeted. “What happens when snowflakes vote? That’s called an avalanche.”
REGISTRATION IS CLOSED
Click here to participate via Zoom.
Lunch provided for in-person attendees.
1 PD credit will be awarded to students who attend in person. PD credit will not be awarded for Zoom attendance.
Co-sponsored by Haub Law's Public Interest Law Scholarship Organization (PILSO) and the National Lawyers Guild (NLG).