Latham Wins Social Justice Award

The Spring Valley NAACP recently honored Latham & Watkins with its Social Justice Award at the Annual Freedom Fund Gala. The firm has a longstanding relationship with the Spring Valley NAACP, including joining the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) to successfully file suit on behalf of the Spring Valley NAACP and several minority voters under the Voting Rights Act, in order to change the way school board elections in the East Ramapo Central School District were run.

Following a six-week federal bench trial, the court ruled in favor of our clients in May 2020, restoring the voting rights of the Black and Latinx communities in the District. The trial court’s 77-page opinion found that the District’s at-large method for school board elections denied Black and Latinx residents an equal opportunity to elect their preferred candidates under the federal Voting Rights Act. The opinion also instituted a new ward voting system, which ensures that Black and Latinx community members will be able to select school board representatives of their choosing for the first time in over a decade. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s decision in January 2021.

Following this tremendous legal victory, Latham used the court-award legal fees to create a donor-advised charitable fund benefiting the public school students of the East Ramapo Central School District in the Hudson Valley area of New York. The Fund for East Ramapo’s Public School Students, established by Latham & Watkins (the Fund), awarded its first grant to the Martin Luther King Multi-Purpose Center for the creation of a one-year “Saturday Academy.” Since then, it has funded a dozen projects with nonprofit organizations throughout the district, all to benefit East Ramapo’s public school students.