Sponsors have paid $10,000 each to underwrite some amazing civil rights heroes for the Institute’s Walk of Fame: more than 10 of the 25 honorees currently proposed and approved. These three heroes who made the difference in our courts don’t yet have sponsors. Consider putting together a group of those who care about civil rights to sponsor one of them. Three landmark civil rights legal cases are among them.
Jukichi and Ken Harada
1915
Challengers of the 1913 California Alien Land Law, the family’s Riverside Lemon Street home is a National Historic Landmark that embodies their 1915 victory. The Haradas died while interned at Topaz Relocation Center (Arizona) during WWII. Their daughter returned to the home after the war.
Tim Hays
1967
In 1967, as editor of The Press-Enterprise, Hays supervised the publication of a series of more than 100 articles exposing abuse of authority by a judge who served as the conservator for the Agua Caliente Indians in Palm Springs. The paper won the Pulitzer Prize for Social Service for the articles in 1968. In 1984 and 1986, Hays, a champion of open government, won two separate U.S. Supreme Court cases that established the right of the public (and the press) to attend jury selection in criminal trial proceedings and to attend pre-trial hearings in criminal cases with few exceptions.
Judge Virginia A. Phillips
2010
On September 9, 2010, Judge Virginia A. Phillips ruled in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States of America that the ban on service by openly gay service members was an unconstitutional violation of the First and Fifth Amendments. On October 12, 2010, she granted an immediate worldwide injunction prohibiting the Department of Defense from enforcing the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy and ordered the military to suspend and discontinue any investigation or discharge, separation, or other proceedings based on it.
