Diversity in Our Communities
The firm's diversity initiatives extend outside the firm, reaching the legal profession and the communities in which we work and live.
Our lawyers are active in a number of affinity bars, including the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, the Hispanic National Bar Association, the National Bar Association and the Greater Washington Area Chapter of the National Bar Association (GWAC), GAYLAW, the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association, the National South Asian Bar Association, the Vietnamese American Bar Association, and the Women's Bar Association of the District of Columbia (WBA). The firm also supports a number of organizations dedicated to increasing diversity in the legal profession as a whole, including the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, the California Minority Counsel Program, and the Orange County (California) Diversity Task Force, and the National Association of Muslim Lawyers. Crowell & Moring is also a co-sponsor of the DC Minority Attorney Networking Series and the New York City Minority Attorney Networking Series, and is a long-time participant in "DC Road Show" efforts to attract African American students to large-firm practice in the city. Crowell & Moring attorneys are also active in their communities. Our attorneys currently hold positions such as:
Many of the firm's non-legal community activities promote diversity and inclusion. Our Orange County office has an Educational Outreach Program at the predominantly Latino Sierra Intermediate School, which has been identified as the poorest middle school in Orange County, California. In DC, lawyers tutor Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School students from the predominately African-American and low-income Anacostia neighborhood in the District. Through the C&M Foundation, the firm directly supports a number of initiatives in the Washington, DC area focusing on increasing the number of minority students who graduate from high school and subsequently go on to pursue various avenues of higher education. Crowell & Moring also actively participates in and regularly hosts the Council on Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO) Connections program, founded to expand opportunities for minorities and low-income students to attend law school.
Crowell & Moring also regularly contributes financially to charitable legal organizations that promote diversity, such as the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center; Ayuda, Inc.; CASA of Maryland, Inc.; Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, National Women's Law Center; the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs; the Whitman Walker Clinic Legal Services Program, Women Empowered Against Domestic Violence; and the DC Volunteer Lawyers Project.
The firm's extensive pro bono program regularly includes representations with important implications for diversity and civil rights, including work on behalf of minorities, immigrants and other victims of discrimination. Recent significant representations include:
- assisting the ACLU of the National Capital Area in recommending revisions to proposed legislation that would strengthen the District's hate crimes law;
- filing of a U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief on behalf of a group of U.S. Senators in support of the voluntary efforts of public school districts in Seattle and Louisville to maintain integrated primary and secondary schools;
- representation of a former member of the military who was not hired as a city police officer because of her military discharge under the so-called "Don't Ask/Don't Tell" policy;
- representation of an equal rights advocacy organization and disabled individuals in litigation against a restaurant chain that discriminated against persons with disabilities by failing to provide accessible entrances, restrooms, and parking;
- representation of refugees with asylum claims based on persecution or abuse because of sexual orientation, or based on gender-related issues such as genital mutilation;
- representation of individuals living with HIV/AIDS in appealing the Social Security Administration's denial of their claims for social security disability benefits; and
- representation of an equal rights advocacy group in challenging a housing developer's failure to comply with the Fair Housing Act's requirements for accessible housing.
Click here for more on Crowell & Moring's award-winning pro bono program.