In January, we joined millions of Americans to watch President Joe Biden take office — a moment that took place in the shadow of the January 6 insurrection that took place in our nation’s capital, just weeks before the inauguration.

We condemned this horrifying attack on our democracy, which made clear the long journey our country faces in dismantling the white supremacism and racism that continues to pervade our society and even our justice system.

Learn more about how we’re tackling key issues of police accountability and systemic racism by visiting our Qualified Immunity Project’s webpage.

In March, thanks to the incredible and innovative work of our Development team, we were honored to receive a transformative gift of $2.4 million from the Arthur and Charlotte Zitrin Foundation of San Francisco, which has enabled us to enhance our efforts to stop court secrecy through this year’s hire of Craig Briskin, Public Justice’s first-ever Richard Zitrin Anti-Secrecy Attorney.

In his role, Craig will help further our longstanding efforts to break the barrier of courthouse secrecy caused by secret settlements and overbroad court protective orders that hide crucial information from the public. We are so grateful to Richard Zitrin, the Foundation’s president. Learn more about this unprecedented gift here.

Also in March, we filed a historic lawsuit challenging former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s Title IX regulations, in which we represent a group of incredible young leaders from California’s Berkeley High School calling for the Biden Administration to step up and take action to protect students across the country.

This past May, we celebrated a historic win in court against the corporate behemoth Monsanto as part of our fight for consumers’ rights and access to justice. On May 14, we and our co-counsel won the Ninth Circuit appeal in Hardeman v. Monsanto, in which Monsanto challenged an $80 million verdict on behalf of Edwin Hardeman, a California man who contracted non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from his exposure to Roundup.

This is the first appellate ruling in the country on this issue and will affect the rights of millions of current and future victims of the dangerous herbicide.

Learn more about the case and the major implications of this decision in our blog post: “The civil justice system is often the only way to hold powerful actors accountable for their wrongdoing. When juries speak out often enough, and loudly enough, companies are forced to listen—and change their ways.” We are now continuing to advocate in the case, urging the U.S. Supreme Court not to disturb the lower court’s decision.

In July, we joined our supporters, advocates, and allies for our Virtual Gala and Awards Presentation, in which we bid farewell to our Immediate Past President Eric L. Cramer and welcomed President Dan Bryson.

We also recognized our Development Director Kelly Simon with the 2021 Huntington Hero Award, and honored this year’s Trial Lawyer of the Year winners, featuring two incredible legal teams who fought for justice on behalf of thousands of Native Hawaiians whose land was stolen and an Ohio man subjected to police brutality in the City of East Cleveland.

Finally, we were honored to celebrate this year’s 2021 Champion of Justice, civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who shared with us his vision for a just future: "We have to continue to make sure marginalized communities are well-armed to challenge the system that disenfranchises them. We will continue to tackle injustice everywhere."

In September, we ramped up our fight for a just climate future in light of the U.S. and European Union’s signed agreement to reduce their methane emissions by 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030.

While a good first step, the plan failed to include regulating methane emissions within the agricultural sector and instead, included support for factory farm gas (branded "biogas" by Big Ag and Big Oil & Gas). With industrial animal agriculture accounting for nearly a third of global methane emissions, this is a significant and serious omission.

In response, we joined the 25 climate, environmental justice, and rural community groups who signed our April climate petition to release a statement, urging the Biden Administration to reject factory farm gas as a means of reducing methane.

As we made clear in our petition, investing in factory farm gas is a dirty, false solution, which only further entrenches the factory farm system at the expense of the environment, communities of color, and white rural communities.

In November, we stepped up in our fight for workers in the food and farm industry through our first-ever lawsuit seeking justice for this country’s undocumented workers.

On November 4, we filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center to ensure that undocumented immigrants who are injured at work receive workers’ compensation wages in Michigan. Our lawsuit states that Michigan’s continued denial of undocumented workers’ access to workers’ compensation wages contravenes Michigan Supreme Court precedent and violates due process.

With this challenge, we’re sending a clear message that everyone deserves a safe and healthy workplace and the support needed to recover when injured — no matter who you are or where you’re from. Learn more about our lawsuit here.

Also in November, we also found out Public Justice will be headed back to the Supreme Court of the United States in the new year! On November 15, SCOTUS granted certiorari in Morgan v. Sundance, Inc., a wage theft class action, in which we serve as co-counsel representing Robyn Morgan, a former Taco Bell employee.

Following months of litigation in court, Sundance (a company that owns more than 150 Taco Bell franchises) decided to change tactics and attempt to move the case to arbitration.

We believe it lost its right to demand arbitration by first fighting in court, and we argue that this is just another case of corporate gamesmanship that often occurs as part of a company’s attempt to evade accountability. Read more about this case on our blog.

In February, we launched our campaign to push for passage of the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal (FAIR) Act (H.R. 1374), which was reintroduced in Congress.

The FAIR Act would ban forced arbitration clauses in employment, consumer, investor and medical contracts, giving people an opportunity to choose whether or not they’d like to pursue a dispute outside of the courts rather than being forced to work things out on a corporation’s terms. Forced arbitration clauses can be found in the fine print of millions of contracts; their purpose is to protect companies from being held accountable if they break the law, such as committing sexual assault, wage theft, and racial discrimination.

We’ve been working on fighting forced arbitration for a long time as part of our Access to Justice Project, and passage of this Act would be a critical step in holding powerful corporations accountable through the civil justice system. Learn more and take action here.

In April, we joined the nation in watching the events of the trial for George Floyd’s killer unfold, in which we witnessed a long overdue guilty verdict by a jury that saw the dire need for accountability in the face of blatant murder and police brutality.

While accountability for George Floyd’s killer has come, April’s verdict was a powerful reminder of the disproportionate impact police and other forces and institutions have on communities of color. Justice means more than one verdict, and we still have much work to do in the face of systemic racism and police brutality.

"True justice for George Floyd, Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade would mean each of those individuals was alive with us today." Read our full statement here.

In June, we reaffirmed our commitment to creating a just world that celebrates the rights and dignity of the entire LGBTQ+ community, as we joined our allies to celebrate Pride Month. We’ve been advocating for the rights of the LGBTQ+ community for years, including upholding protections for transgender students under Title IX and urging Congress to pass the Equality Act.

We also won a key victory in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for our student survivor Jane Doe in one of the largest school districts in the country as part of our Students’ Civil Rights Project work. This decision helps ensure that schools must be accountable for protecting students against sexual assault on school-sponsored trips.

And finally, we sent a clear message to corporations attempting to put profit over people by suing Smithfield for lying to the public about meat shortages during the COVID pandemic.

In August, we were excited to see a significant win in a case that’s part of our Debtors’ Prison Project, which works to end the criminalization of poverty and establish key legal protections to which the debtors are entitled. On August 12, the Washington Supreme Court ruled in favor of Steven Long, a homeless man in Seattle, who was charged over $500 for a minor parking infraction. The Court held that the fine violated the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment and that the courts must consider the individual circumstances of the person being fined. In February, we filed an amicus brief in support of Long, making some of the very arguments the Court recognized in its opinion. You can read more about this important case on our blog.

Also in August, Public Justice’s Food Project also saw several significant legal wins in our fight against Ag-Gag laws in several states, including Kansas and Arkansas. Ag-Gag laws unconstitutionally silence whistleblowers and prohibit undercover investigations that expose some of the agriculture industry’s most egregious and harmful practices like animal cruelty, pollution, and worker abuse. To learn more about our fight against Ag-Gag laws, visit our new Ag-Gag webpage, which includes details on our work in several other states like Idaho and North Carolina.

This fall, as students across the country headed back to school, we joined our fellow student advocates and allies to pressure the Biden Administration’s Department of Education into ensuring it upholds its commitment to protecting students under Title IX.

With many students stepping foot on campus for the very first time this past semester, they were entering what advocacy experts have dubbed as the “Double Red Zone” — the time between the beginning of school and Thanksgiving break, in which more than 50 percent of all sexual assaults will occur.

This makes Title IX protections more important than ever and why we joined Know Your IX’s Ed Act Now campaign, urging the U.S. Department of Education to swiftly undo the Trump Administration's Title IX regulations by October 2021 instead of waiting until next year.

In October, we joined our allies at Know Your IX, End Rape on Campus, National Women's Law Center, Every Voice Coalition, It's On Us, Equal Rights Advocates, and Girls' Inc. to deliver in-person more than 50,000 signatures to the U.S. Department of Education.

Following a meeting with Ed Department representatives, we heard from student survivors and leaders on the urgency for the department to act. As we made clear in our March lawsuit, the 2020 rules adopted under former Secretary Betsy DeVos endanger students everywhere, and will continue to do so until they’ve been dismantled.

In December, we were honored that the Public Justice Food Project was named a 2021 recipient of the Food Chain Workers Alliance’s annual Food Justice Awards for our work in creating a more just and transparent food system.

We’re proud to work with allies like FCWA in our efforts to ensure protections for this country’s food workers, including urging passage of the Protecting America's Meatpacking Workers Act, which would strengthen worker safety and increase protections for the more than 1.3 million meatpacking workers who were disproportionately impacted by the COVID pandemic.

In December, we also filed the opening brief in our Eleventh Circuit appeal against Gwinnett County School District — the largest school district in Georgia — for punishing our client Jane Doe after she told trusted school officials that she had been sexually assaulted by a fellow classmate. Schools should never retaliate against students reporting sexual assault under Title IX, and we hope the Eleventh Circuit will recognize this and grant us our appeal. More details on the case can be found here.