MEET THE PANELISTS
Linda Lye
Staff Attorney, ACLU of Northern California
Linda Lye joined the ACLU-NC as a staff attorney in 2010 after serving 5 years on its Board of Directors and 7 years on its Legal Committee. She was formerly a partner at Altshuler Berzon, a boutique law firm specializing in labor and employment law, as well as constitutional, civil rights, and environmental law. Early in her legal career, she clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the United States Supreme Court. Prior to law school, she was a policy analyst for the fiscal committees of the Assembly in the California Legislature, and also worked as a death penalty investigator at the California Appellate Project. She has an undergraduate degree from Yale University and a JD from Boalt Hall, at the University of California at Berkeley.
John Scott (GGU JD 76)
Founding Attorney, The Scott Law Firm
John Scott hung his shingle straight out of law school in 1977 in San Francisco and quickly realized that his passion was civil-rights work and the courtroom. Some of John’s more recent accomplishments include teaming with John Burris and Jim Chanin to secure an $11.5 million-dollar settlement for over 100 persons falsely arrested, and often beaten, by a group of Oakland police officers known as The Riders. In addition, he recently obtained a jury verdict against Alex Fagan, Jr. on behalf of Adam Snyder, a victim of the off-duty police beating known in San Francisco as Fajitagate. Last year, John teamed with John Burris to obtain a $2 million-dollar verdict on behalf of a woman who was denied promotion to Captain at the Oakland Police Department because she was pregnant. Over the past 30 years, John has devoted himself to helping people who are vulnerable and lack the resources to “take on” public entities and big business. While he can point to many million-dollar verdicts and settlements, his greatest successes are the cases which have changed public policy or positively impacted peoples’ lives. He now offers his pro bono services to the community by acting as a mediator in civil-rights and elder-abuse matters.
Reggie Shuford
Director of Law and Policy, Equal Justice Society
Reggie Shuford is the Director of Law and Policy at the Equal Justice Society. An attorney with the ACLU from 1995 through April 2010, he helped pioneer legal challenges to racial profiling practices nationwide. He was the ACLU’s chief litigator in challenges to racial profiling, leading national litigation efforts and consulting with ACLU state affiliates and others in cases of “driving while black or brown,” airport profiling, and profiling related to the war on terror. Shuford’s advocacy to promote affirmative action includes leading recent efforts in Missouri and Oklahoma to defeat anti-affirmative action ballot initiatives, similar to California’s Prop. 209. His docket has also included cases involving educational adequacy and equity, the school to prison pipeline, and the right to counsel for indigents. He also has been involved in advocacy against racism in the use of the death penalty. Since September 11, 2001, working with colleagues around the country, he has filed a half dozen landmark lawsuits against major airlines alleging racial discrimination, as well as a nationwide challenge to the Transportation Security Administration’s management of the No-Fly List. He has authored numerous petitions and briefs for cases that were presented to the U.S. Supreme Court dealing with matters of discrimination, the Equal Protection Clause and First and Fourth Amendment rights. He has published articles related to racial profiling, affirmative action, and violence in the African American community. Reggie also teaches and speaks regularly around the country and internationally, and has appeared on numerous television programs. He has been interviewed on various radio and TV programs, including National Public Radio and MSNBC, and has been quoted in major newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and The Guardian. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Law, where he was his graduating class president. He is a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School for the 2009-10 academic year and the recent recipient of the University of North Carolina School of Law’s Distinguished Alumnus Award.
Jessica Stender
Attorney, Goldstein, Demchak, Baller, Borgen & Dardarian
Jessica is a Civil Rights Fellow at Goldstein, Demchak, Baller, Borgen & Dardarian, a plaintiffs’ public interest class action law firm in Oakland. She represents individuals against large companies in complex, class and collective action lawsuits in the areas of employment and environmental justice. Jessica attended Berkeley Law (Boalt Hall) where she was active in the Boalt chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, the Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law and the Student Liaison Committee for Faculty Appointments. Before attending law school, Jessica worked for three years as a paralegal at Friend of Farmworkers, a Philadelphia-based office providing free legal services to farmworkers and other low-wage workers in various areas of employment. She was also co-chair of the Coalition for Latin American Migrants and Immigrants, a community-based coalition working for and within the immigrant community in Philadelphia.
Virginia Villegas
Partner, Talamantes Villegas Carrera, LLP
As an attorney, Virginia Villegas has dedicated her career to working on behalf of low-wage and mostly monolingual Spanish-speaking, immigrant workers in San Francisco and the Bay Area. After graduating from The University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 1995, Ms. Villegas worked at La Raza Centro Legal, a community based non-profit organization until May 2001. As the Supervising Attorney of the Workers’ Advocacy Project, a project created to represent and educate Latino workers of their employment rights, Ms. Villegas won significant victories for some of the most vulnerable and exploited workers such as day laborers, janitors, restaurant workers and domestic workers. Since May 2001, Ms. Villegas has been a partner at Talamantes Villegas Carrera, and has continued to represent low wage, immigrant workers in wage and hour class actions and discrimination matters as well as providing educational trainings to low wage workers. In addition, Ms. Villegas serves as the firm’s managing partner. Ms. Villegas has served on the Board of Directors of various non-profit organizations. Most recently she was the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Center for Young Women’s Development until September 2009. As of January 2010, Ms. Villegas serves as member of the Circle of Advisors for the Center for Young Women’s Development. Ms. Villegas has also served on the Board of Directors of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel, San Francisco La Raza Lawyers Association, Discrimination Research Center, and the Homeless Prenatal Program. In 2006, Ms. Villegas was appointed to the Sweatfree Procurement Advisory Group by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and served on that Board for two years. Ms. Villegas is also a member of the San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association, California Employment Lawyers Association, Consumer Attorneys of California, San Francisco La Raza Lawyers Association, and the Hispanic National Bar Association.
Staff Attorney, ACLU of Northern California
Linda Lye joined the ACLU-NC as a staff attorney in 2010 after serving 5 years on its Board of Directors and 7 years on its Legal Committee. She was formerly a partner at Altshuler Berzon, a boutique law firm specializing in labor and employment law, as well as constitutional, civil rights, and environmental law. Early in her legal career, she clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the United States Supreme Court. Prior to law school, she was a policy analyst for the fiscal committees of the Assembly in the California Legislature, and also worked as a death penalty investigator at the California Appellate Project. She has an undergraduate degree from Yale University and a JD from Boalt Hall, at the University of California at Berkeley.
John Scott (GGU JD 76)
Founding Attorney, The Scott Law Firm
John Scott hung his shingle straight out of law school in 1977 in San Francisco and quickly realized that his passion was civil-rights work and the courtroom. Some of John’s more recent accomplishments include teaming with John Burris and Jim Chanin to secure an $11.5 million-dollar settlement for over 100 persons falsely arrested, and often beaten, by a group of Oakland police officers known as The Riders. In addition, he recently obtained a jury verdict against Alex Fagan, Jr. on behalf of Adam Snyder, a victim of the off-duty police beating known in San Francisco as Fajitagate. Last year, John teamed with John Burris to obtain a $2 million-dollar verdict on behalf of a woman who was denied promotion to Captain at the Oakland Police Department because she was pregnant. Over the past 30 years, John has devoted himself to helping people who are vulnerable and lack the resources to “take on” public entities and big business. While he can point to many million-dollar verdicts and settlements, his greatest successes are the cases which have changed public policy or positively impacted peoples’ lives. He now offers his pro bono services to the community by acting as a mediator in civil-rights and elder-abuse matters.
Reggie Shuford
Director of Law and Policy, Equal Justice Society
Reggie Shuford is the Director of Law and Policy at the Equal Justice Society. An attorney with the ACLU from 1995 through April 2010, he helped pioneer legal challenges to racial profiling practices nationwide. He was the ACLU’s chief litigator in challenges to racial profiling, leading national litigation efforts and consulting with ACLU state affiliates and others in cases of “driving while black or brown,” airport profiling, and profiling related to the war on terror. Shuford’s advocacy to promote affirmative action includes leading recent efforts in Missouri and Oklahoma to defeat anti-affirmative action ballot initiatives, similar to California’s Prop. 209. His docket has also included cases involving educational adequacy and equity, the school to prison pipeline, and the right to counsel for indigents. He also has been involved in advocacy against racism in the use of the death penalty. Since September 11, 2001, working with colleagues around the country, he has filed a half dozen landmark lawsuits against major airlines alleging racial discrimination, as well as a nationwide challenge to the Transportation Security Administration’s management of the No-Fly List. He has authored numerous petitions and briefs for cases that were presented to the U.S. Supreme Court dealing with matters of discrimination, the Equal Protection Clause and First and Fourth Amendment rights. He has published articles related to racial profiling, affirmative action, and violence in the African American community. Reggie also teaches and speaks regularly around the country and internationally, and has appeared on numerous television programs. He has been interviewed on various radio and TV programs, including National Public Radio and MSNBC, and has been quoted in major newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and The Guardian. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Law, where he was his graduating class president. He is a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School for the 2009-10 academic year and the recent recipient of the University of North Carolina School of Law’s Distinguished Alumnus Award.
Jessica Stender
Attorney, Goldstein, Demchak, Baller, Borgen & Dardarian
Jessica is a Civil Rights Fellow at Goldstein, Demchak, Baller, Borgen & Dardarian, a plaintiffs’ public interest class action law firm in Oakland. She represents individuals against large companies in complex, class and collective action lawsuits in the areas of employment and environmental justice. Jessica attended Berkeley Law (Boalt Hall) where she was active in the Boalt chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, the Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law and the Student Liaison Committee for Faculty Appointments. Before attending law school, Jessica worked for three years as a paralegal at Friend of Farmworkers, a Philadelphia-based office providing free legal services to farmworkers and other low-wage workers in various areas of employment. She was also co-chair of the Coalition for Latin American Migrants and Immigrants, a community-based coalition working for and within the immigrant community in Philadelphia.
Virginia Villegas
Partner, Talamantes Villegas Carrera, LLP
As an attorney, Virginia Villegas has dedicated her career to working on behalf of low-wage and mostly monolingual Spanish-speaking, immigrant workers in San Francisco and the Bay Area. After graduating from The University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 1995, Ms. Villegas worked at La Raza Centro Legal, a community based non-profit organization until May 2001. As the Supervising Attorney of the Workers’ Advocacy Project, a project created to represent and educate Latino workers of their employment rights, Ms. Villegas won significant victories for some of the most vulnerable and exploited workers such as day laborers, janitors, restaurant workers and domestic workers. Since May 2001, Ms. Villegas has been a partner at Talamantes Villegas Carrera, and has continued to represent low wage, immigrant workers in wage and hour class actions and discrimination matters as well as providing educational trainings to low wage workers. In addition, Ms. Villegas serves as the firm’s managing partner. Ms. Villegas has served on the Board of Directors of various non-profit organizations. Most recently she was the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Center for Young Women’s Development until September 2009. As of January 2010, Ms. Villegas serves as member of the Circle of Advisors for the Center for Young Women’s Development. Ms. Villegas has also served on the Board of Directors of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel, San Francisco La Raza Lawyers Association, Discrimination Research Center, and the Homeless Prenatal Program. In 2006, Ms. Villegas was appointed to the Sweatfree Procurement Advisory Group by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and served on that Board for two years. Ms. Villegas is also a member of the San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association, California Employment Lawyers Association, Consumer Attorneys of California, San Francisco La Raza Lawyers Association, and the Hispanic National Bar Association.
