July 11, 2022 • 13 mins
A spate of recent Supreme Court decisions are eroding the civil rights of all Americans, especially women. Katie Phang checks in with the Brooklyn team to gauge their reactions to the overturning of Roe v Wade and other decisions. Listen to how these future lawyers plan to fight and protect our rights.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Class Action is a production of I Heart Radio and
Sound Argument got It, and we are recording. So as
somebody who's been doing this for more than twentysomething years,
this being a trial lawyer, I'd love to know how
you guys are feeling, because candidly, I'd like to feel
a little bit better about kind of the state of play,
(00:22):
because I'm a little bit disheartened by what's been going on.
I'm more than happy to speak on that. I'm currently
working as a legal intern for the New York Civil
Liberties Union, and I mean their legal policy department. So
as the jobs decision has come out, um, it's it's
been a really interesting time to be working in civil
(00:43):
rights litigation, and especially to be on the ground at
City Hall in the middle of protests. Yeah, I mean,
I truly never thought that I would be sitting studying
for the bar and get a notification on my phone
saying that Roe v. Wade was overturned like I was
sitting in this seat. I don't think I'll ever forget it,
(01:04):
doing like a MB practice set and then like that,
I snapped my fingers in case the audio didn't pick
that up. Then like that, you know, my rights were
taken away from me. I actually had a similar thought
like when this all happened, I was thinking, like I
remember learning about Row and Casey and Grizzwold and all,
(01:26):
like all these cases in comm law just a year ago,
and I think I was with a friend come like
at work. I remember I was sitting in the courtroom
waiting actually for a trial to start, and the decision
came out. In addition to like the just automatic devastation
and not shocked, because it wasn't a surprise, to be honest,
but like devastation and just confusion, was also like what
(01:50):
does this mean for the future in terms of our
legal education? Very upset and disheartened because I used to
always say that the courts were a place of recourse.
The courts were a place that you could go to
get some sense or some semblance of reasoned explanation, decisions
(02:14):
that had some bases that were grounded in law right,
that had some type of reason to them, And that
It's been very hard as a woman, as a mother,
as a human to figure out how it's possible to
have somebody regulate your uterus and your vagina but not
regulate a firearm. I've been hearing a lot of this
(02:36):
rhetoric that this system is broken, the judicial system is broken, um,
And I disagree with that sentiment in a sense because
I think for a system to be broken, it needs
to be fully functioning to begin with, and I don't
think that that was ever the case, UM, in any
American institution. To be honest, I think that we are
(03:00):
a society that was founded upon murder and racism and violence,
and to be an educated American citizen you have to
acknowledge that history. I think we are in extremely hypocritical nation.
We invade other nations on the pretense of morality and
(03:24):
human rights, but in our own backyard we are violating
the eighth and thirteenth Amendment in prisons, and we are
forcing ten year olds to carry a pregnancy to term
when they're the victim of rape or incest. And we
kill or injure over a hundred thousand Americans every year
with guns. So I think I personally have always felt
(03:45):
a sense of urgency and responsibility to advocate for everyone's
equal rights, and that comes from a place of compassion
and empathy. But I've shifted to a feeling of anger
in the past couple of weeks when my own own
personal rights have have been under attack and have been threatened.
Do you feel like you're now even more primed in
(04:08):
light of all of the civil rights that are kind
of at issue now because of the Supreme Court decisions?
You guys feel like it's made you even more ready
because you've you've had a test run now. I mean,
you guys have have done, you know, mock litigation involving
civil rights. And that's exactly what's about UM to really
(04:28):
kind of come to a forefront and every state of
this land, every state's going to have massive litigation which
will eventually end up in front of the Supreme Court. Again,
I think uncritical civil rights issues. I think that having
this opportunity to do this particular competition two semesters ago
was very important to me. I never had UM experienced.
(04:52):
I used to work in personal injury and then I
dabbled with criminal lat but like, this specific competition really
kind of put me in the center of what it's
really like. There's so much hate in this world, there's
so much divide in this world. And again, the whole
competition is about homeless people literally being persecuted because they
(05:15):
were homeless, and that just adds on to everything and
just intertwining it back to the real questions will be
way question that you had before. It's just it's so
ironic that we're lost, and so we're supposed to go
out and defend people and stand up for people's rights.
But I've never felt so hopeless and sad and angry
(05:36):
then then now, and it's just I'm supposed to go
out there and help people, and I'm just so hopeless
myself right now. I mean, Antnia, I know that you
want to focus on immigration. No shortage of massive immigration
issues that have come out of the last administration, and
the one right now there's title for you too that's
going on the remain in Mexico Supreme Court dealt with that,
(06:00):
gave the Biden administration and went on that but tied
affortitude still there. I mean, that's just a small example
of some of the issues that are going on. And
that's just on the border. That doesn't encompass all immigration issues.
But are you still focusing on that? You think when
you graduate from law school or has the recent kind
of slew of what I will editorialize say are bad
decisions from Scotus changing your mind as well as it
(06:20):
did for Catherine. Yeah, I'm still planning to do immigration law.
That's kind of always been my compass um. This summer,
I'm working at a public defender's office in New York
in their immigration practice, and so you're seeing the overlay
of immigration issues with criminal issues, with family issues, with
civil issues, and it's like all of that together. Obviously,
(06:45):
there are severe impacts on this population of folks that
we're working with, given this terms decisions. But you know,
for a long time, immigration has been a punching bag.
It's been used as a bargaining chip by our government. Um,
the Dreamers, they've been used as a bargaining chip. And
you know, I think you know, folks in this room,
(07:07):
they'll say, you know, obviously I'm angry, Obviously I'm I'm upset.
But for so long immigration advocates have been dealing with this,
and our populations have not had access to abortion rights,
they've not had had access to interstate travel, and so
we have been preparing for this in the immigration world.
(07:28):
We have always dealt with these issues. And so to
the extent that it's new or different, it is for
a different population of people. Yeah, I'm I'm still walking
that path. I think it's the most vulnerable group of
people that you know you can you can work with
in this country. And I say that with a grain assault,
(07:49):
of course, because I hope someday that there are more
rights afforded to undocumented folks and people who are seeking
immigration relief and that the system becomes better. But that's
that's my path. I'm still walking it and and we'll
see how it goes, and hopefully I don't get burned
out in the process. But I'm working on that too.
(08:10):
So it's a journey. I think that there are just
so many different things that are going on in this
world today that if you can't identify with one thing,
you can definitely identify with another or feel like you're
being affective somehow. Just even I remember Antonie and I
(08:30):
participated in UM We did a pro bono clinic with
Safe Harbor Clinic from Brooklyn Law School to help with
TPS Temporary Protected Status for Ukrainian refugees, and I just
remember so many people from Brooklyn Law School, from other
schools and other places showing up, you know, maybe no
(08:51):
one having anything to do with Ukraine, having no ancestors
or family members from there, and people were still willing
to show up and help. And if people are still
willing to do that, then you know, I'm very sure
that there's going to be a lot of students who
are changing their minds about which kind of law they
want to practice here and what they want to do
(09:14):
with their careers in the United States, within the United States.
So I have no doubt that many people are going
to that might be changing their career paths and what
they want to practice. And how are you feeling, Catherine?
I know that your mom was a lawyer in Ukraine,
so you have a very personal connection to it. How
are things going and do you how are you feeling
(09:34):
about the fact that this is still an ongoing war
in Ukraine and it hasn't ceased, and there's been some
recent developments with admission for NATO, etcetera. But I mean,
it's a lot. So how are things going for you
and your family? I honestly, every morning I turn on
the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, and
(09:55):
it's usually like the front page on the on the Internet,
and every day it's just people are dying, cities getting bombed.
It's just insane, and my mom is always on the news.
Anytime she has free time, she's reading something or listening
to something and hoping. She like one day gets excited,
(10:17):
she's like, Okay, I think this is going to come
to an end, and then the next day something horrible
happens in some part of Ukraine and she's just like,
oh no, this is going to take a while. And
we have family that has uh left to poland some
to Canada. I have family coming in this month of
here to our home, and it's sort of a bittersweet
(10:40):
experience because I'm happy to see them, but I know
why they're here and it breaks my heart. But my mom,
she's a paralegal and she's always constantly doing research to
see what kind of lawyers are out there, immigration lawyers
who can help um, so that she stays connected and
she has information to give out to people who are interested.
(11:05):
So it's a struggle every day, but we're staying strong
and we're going to stay positive. It's not a sense
of anger for myself, but it's a sense of anger
for the fact that time is a finite resource and
we don't have time to be fighting these old battles
we have so much progress that still needs to be
(11:25):
made in terms of systemic racism, um, in terms of
institutions like the education system, the criminal justice system, police reform,
police brutality, um. Things that I'm deeply committed to myself,
and we've fought these battles already, and so I'm angry
in the sense that it's now hindering the progress that
(11:47):
I'm personally working towards, and I know people who are
invested in civil rights and civil liberties are working towards
because we just we have so much more work to do. Echoing,
I'll leave that, I'm going to make a decision to
try to, you know, keep it together, stay strong, and
still have faith that you know this country well one
(12:12):
day go the right direction. But meeting you, all of you,
and meeting all of the students underground and law school
and the total unadulterated joy, passion desire to effect change
makes me feel so much better about where this world
(12:33):
is heading, where my little girl is going to have
for her future, what type of place she's going to
have a seat at the table. Because of women like you.
It makes me feel a lot better because we live
in a very difficult world with very selfish people that
sit in seats of power. So to be able to
(12:56):
listen to all of you say what you care about
and how it impacts you and why it motivates you
to do what you're going to do, helps me breathe
a sigh of relief to say, Okay, the world's going
to be in a good place and we're gonna be
and I'm leaving this world, this world of law, the
world in general, this world is being left in good hands.
(13:33):
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your
favorite shows.
Class Action is a production of I Heart Radio and
Sound Argument got It, and we are recording. So as
somebody who's been doing this for more than twentysomething years,
this being a trial lawyer, I'd love to know how
you guys are feeling, because candidly, I'd like to feel
a little bit better about kind of the state of play,
(00:22):
because I'm a little bit disheartened by what's been going on.
I'm more than happy to speak on that. I'm currently
working as a legal intern for the New York Civil
Liberties Union, and I mean their legal policy department. So
as the jobs decision has come out, um, it's it's
been a really interesting time to be working in civil
(00:43):
rights litigation, and especially to be on the ground at
City Hall in the middle of protests. Yeah, I mean,
I truly never thought that I would be sitting studying
for the bar and get a notification on my phone
saying that Roe v. Wade was overturned like I was
sitting in this seat. I don't think I'll ever forget it,
(01:04):
doing like a MB practice set and then like that,
I snapped my fingers in case the audio didn't pick
that up. Then like that, you know, my rights were
taken away from me. I actually had a similar thought
like when this all happened, I was thinking, like I
remember learning about Row and Casey and Grizzwold and all,
(01:26):
like all these cases in comm law just a year ago,
and I think I was with a friend come like
at work. I remember I was sitting in the courtroom
waiting actually for a trial to start, and the decision
came out. In addition to like the just automatic devastation
and not shocked, because it wasn't a surprise, to be honest,
but like devastation and just confusion, was also like what
(01:50):
does this mean for the future in terms of our
legal education? Very upset and disheartened because I used to
always say that the courts were a place of recourse.
The courts were a place that you could go to
get some sense or some semblance of reasoned explanation, decisions
(02:14):
that had some bases that were grounded in law right,
that had some type of reason to them, And that
It's been very hard as a woman, as a mother,
as a human to figure out how it's possible to
have somebody regulate your uterus and your vagina but not
regulate a firearm. I've been hearing a lot of this
(02:36):
rhetoric that this system is broken, the judicial system is broken, um,
And I disagree with that sentiment in a sense because
I think for a system to be broken, it needs
to be fully functioning to begin with, and I don't
think that that was ever the case, UM, in any
American institution. To be honest, I think that we are
(03:00):
a society that was founded upon murder and racism and violence,
and to be an educated American citizen you have to
acknowledge that history. I think we are in extremely hypocritical nation.
We invade other nations on the pretense of morality and
(03:24):
human rights, but in our own backyard we are violating
the eighth and thirteenth Amendment in prisons, and we are
forcing ten year olds to carry a pregnancy to term
when they're the victim of rape or incest. And we
kill or injure over a hundred thousand Americans every year
with guns. So I think I personally have always felt
(03:45):
a sense of urgency and responsibility to advocate for everyone's
equal rights, and that comes from a place of compassion
and empathy. But I've shifted to a feeling of anger
in the past couple of weeks when my own own
personal rights have have been under attack and have been threatened.
Do you feel like you're now even more primed in
(04:08):
light of all of the civil rights that are kind
of at issue now because of the Supreme Court decisions?
You guys feel like it's made you even more ready
because you've you've had a test run now. I mean,
you guys have have done, you know, mock litigation involving
civil rights. And that's exactly what's about UM to really
(04:28):
kind of come to a forefront and every state of
this land, every state's going to have massive litigation which
will eventually end up in front of the Supreme Court. Again,
I think uncritical civil rights issues. I think that having
this opportunity to do this particular competition two semesters ago
was very important to me. I never had UM experienced.
(04:52):
I used to work in personal injury and then I
dabbled with criminal lat but like, this specific competition really
kind of put me in the center of what it's
really like. There's so much hate in this world, there's
so much divide in this world. And again, the whole
competition is about homeless people literally being persecuted because they
(05:15):
were homeless, and that just adds on to everything and
just intertwining it back to the real questions will be
way question that you had before. It's just it's so
ironic that we're lost, and so we're supposed to go
out and defend people and stand up for people's rights.
But I've never felt so hopeless and sad and angry
(05:36):
then then now, and it's just I'm supposed to go
out there and help people, and I'm just so hopeless
myself right now. I mean, Antnia, I know that you
want to focus on immigration. No shortage of massive immigration
issues that have come out of the last administration, and
the one right now there's title for you too that's
going on the remain in Mexico Supreme Court dealt with that,
(06:00):
gave the Biden administration and went on that but tied
affortitude still there. I mean, that's just a small example
of some of the issues that are going on. And
that's just on the border. That doesn't encompass all immigration issues.
But are you still focusing on that? You think when
you graduate from law school or has the recent kind
of slew of what I will editorialize say are bad
decisions from Scotus changing your mind as well as it
(06:20):
did for Catherine. Yeah, I'm still planning to do immigration law.
That's kind of always been my compass um. This summer,
I'm working at a public defender's office in New York
in their immigration practice, and so you're seeing the overlay
of immigration issues with criminal issues, with family issues, with
civil issues, and it's like all of that together. Obviously,
(06:45):
there are severe impacts on this population of folks that
we're working with, given this terms decisions. But you know,
for a long time, immigration has been a punching bag.
It's been used as a bargaining chip by our government. Um,
the Dreamers, they've been used as a bargaining chip. And
you know, I think you know, folks in this room,
(07:07):
they'll say, you know, obviously I'm angry, Obviously I'm I'm upset.
But for so long immigration advocates have been dealing with this,
and our populations have not had access to abortion rights,
they've not had had access to interstate travel, and so
we have been preparing for this in the immigration world.
(07:28):
We have always dealt with these issues. And so to
the extent that it's new or different, it is for
a different population of people. Yeah, I'm I'm still walking
that path. I think it's the most vulnerable group of
people that you know you can you can work with
in this country. And I say that with a grain assault,
(07:49):
of course, because I hope someday that there are more
rights afforded to undocumented folks and people who are seeking
immigration relief and that the system becomes better. But that's
that's my path. I'm still walking it and and we'll
see how it goes, and hopefully I don't get burned
out in the process. But I'm working on that too.
(08:10):
So it's a journey. I think that there are just
so many different things that are going on in this
world today that if you can't identify with one thing,
you can definitely identify with another or feel like you're
being affective somehow. Just even I remember Antonie and I
(08:30):
participated in UM We did a pro bono clinic with
Safe Harbor Clinic from Brooklyn Law School to help with
TPS Temporary Protected Status for Ukrainian refugees, and I just
remember so many people from Brooklyn Law School, from other
schools and other places showing up, you know, maybe no
(08:51):
one having anything to do with Ukraine, having no ancestors
or family members from there, and people were still willing
to show up and help. And if people are still
willing to do that, then you know, I'm very sure
that there's going to be a lot of students who
are changing their minds about which kind of law they
want to practice here and what they want to do
(09:14):
with their careers in the United States, within the United States.
So I have no doubt that many people are going
to that might be changing their career paths and what
they want to practice. And how are you feeling, Catherine?
I know that your mom was a lawyer in Ukraine,
so you have a very personal connection to it. How
are things going and do you how are you feeling
(09:34):
about the fact that this is still an ongoing war
in Ukraine and it hasn't ceased, and there's been some
recent developments with admission for NATO, etcetera. But I mean,
it's a lot. So how are things going for you
and your family? I honestly, every morning I turn on
the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, and
(09:55):
it's usually like the front page on the on the Internet,
and every day it's just people are dying, cities getting bombed.
It's just insane, and my mom is always on the news.
Anytime she has free time, she's reading something or listening
to something and hoping. She like one day gets excited,
(10:17):
she's like, Okay, I think this is going to come
to an end, and then the next day something horrible
happens in some part of Ukraine and she's just like,
oh no, this is going to take a while. And
we have family that has uh left to poland some
to Canada. I have family coming in this month of
here to our home, and it's sort of a bittersweet
(10:40):
experience because I'm happy to see them, but I know
why they're here and it breaks my heart. But my mom,
she's a paralegal and she's always constantly doing research to
see what kind of lawyers are out there, immigration lawyers
who can help um, so that she stays connected and
she has information to give out to people who are interested.
(11:05):
So it's a struggle every day, but we're staying strong
and we're going to stay positive. It's not a sense
of anger for myself, but it's a sense of anger
for the fact that time is a finite resource and
we don't have time to be fighting these old battles
we have so much progress that still needs to be
(11:25):
made in terms of systemic racism, um, in terms of
institutions like the education system, the criminal justice system, police reform,
police brutality, um. Things that I'm deeply committed to myself,
and we've fought these battles already, and so I'm angry
in the sense that it's now hindering the progress that
(11:47):
I'm personally working towards, and I know people who are
invested in civil rights and civil liberties are working towards
because we just we have so much more work to do. Echoing,
I'll leave that, I'm going to make a decision to
try to, you know, keep it together, stay strong, and
still have faith that you know this country well one
(12:12):
day go the right direction. But meeting you, all of you,
and meeting all of the students underground and law school
and the total unadulterated joy, passion desire to effect change
makes me feel so much better about where this world
(12:33):
is heading, where my little girl is going to have
for her future, what type of place she's going to
have a seat at the table. Because of women like you.
It makes me feel a lot better because we live
in a very difficult world with very selfish people that
sit in seats of power. So to be able to
(12:56):
listen to all of you say what you care about
and how it impacts you and why it motivates you
to do what you're going to do, helps me breathe
a sigh of relief to say, Okay, the world's going
to be in a good place and we're gonna be
and I'm leaving this world, this world of law, the
world in general, this world is being left in good hands.
(13:33):
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your
favorite shows.
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