2024 Grants Impact

THIS YEAR, Impact Fund grantees were able to achieve meaningful change for a wide range of communities facing injustice. Here are just a few examples.

After over 17 years of litigation, EarthRights International won a jury verdict holding Chiquita Brands accountable for financing paramilitary death squads in Colombia. This is the first time an American jury has found a major U.S. corporation liable for serious human rights abuses in another country.

Our Children’s Trust successfully settled a climate justice case brought by youth advocates against the state of Hawai’i, requiring the state’s transportation system to emit zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.

And in Washington, Fair Work Center won a landmark court ruling declaring that it is unconstitutional to exclude live-in caregivers from basic wage-and-hour protections under state law.

Click here to read more about Fair Work Center’s case.

MANY OF OUR grants seek to advance racial justice — either directly, through challenges to racist policies and actions, or indirectly, as many injustices we confront disproportionately harm people of color.

Hughes, Socol, Piers, Resnick & Dym, Ltd. is challenging Chicago’s use of a racially discriminatory gunshot detection system that inaccurately targets Black and Latine neighborhoods.

Also in Illinois, Equity Legal Services, Inc. is seeking justice for decades of widespread flooding and raw sewage overflows in a predominantly Black neighborhood.

In New York City, Beldock Levine & Hoffman LLP achieved a record $13 million settlement holding the New York City Police Department accountable for police violence against Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020.

A NUMBER OF our grantees this year are bringing cases in pursuit of environmental justice for farmworkers.

The Center for Food Safety is challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s failure to test and regulate dangerous endocrine-disrupting chemicals in pesticides, which can lead to cancer and other serious health risks for farmworkers and the public.

Earlier this year, Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability successfully settled a case brought by mobile home residents — primarily agricultural workers in the Eastern Coachella Valley — who faced unsafe living conditions such as arsenic-contaminated drinking water and overflowing sewage.

We also supported Snake River Waterkeeper’s lawsuit challenging a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) in Idaho, that polluted drinking water with animal waste and harmed the health of farmworkers.

OUR GRANTEES are making strides in the fight to protect the rights of people in jails and prisons.

Transgender Law Center achieved a groundbreaking settlement ensuring justice for violence and discrimination against transgender women incarcerated in Colorado prisons.

We also supported a case brought by Florida Legal Services on behalf of survivors of sexual violence at the Lowell Correctional Institution, the largest women’s prison in the nation.

And in Ravalli County, Montana, Equal Justice Under Law is challenging the prolonged incarceration of people who are unable to pay pre-trial fees, even when they have not been convicted of a crime — resulting in a modern-day debtors’ prison.

Click here to read more about Transgender Law Center’s case.

TWO OF OUR grantees this year are bringing lawsuits related to the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline on the unceded land of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in Canada.

The Unist’ot’en House of the Wet’suwet’en Nation, represented by Ng Ariss Fong, is seeking to establish that Unist’ot’en has the right to regulate third-party activity, including pipeline construction, on its territories. A positive ruling in this case could benefit all First Nations across Canada, as well as Indigenous peoples in other parts of the world.

Meanwhile, Chantler & Company is representing the Gidimt’en and Likhsilyu Clans of the Wet’suwet’en Nation in a lawsuit against the Canadian police and the pipeline company for violently harassing and intimidating Indigenous land defenders resisting the pipeline.

SEVERAL OF OUR grantees are working to protect the rights of children in schools and in foster care.

For instance, the ACLU of Montana is seeking to overturn a Montana state law that restricts the discussion of reproductive health and LGBTQ+ identities in public schools. In a time of increased hostility towards LGBTQ+ youth, the case aims to ensure that all students can go to school without feeling that their identity is a taboo subject.

In Alaska, Northern Justice Project is bringing a class action against the state’s second-largest school district for physically restraining and isolating students with disabilities as a form of discipline.

We were also excited to hear that in Maine, Children’s Rights achieved a settlement protecting foster children from being dangerously overprescribed psychotropic medication.

Click here to read more about Children’s Rights’ case.

WE ARE GRATEFUL for the efforts of our grantees who are confronting unjust policies and practices harming immigrants at the U.S.–Mexico border.

We supported a class action brought by Al Otro Lado against the Department of Homeland Security for mandating the use of the CBP One app during the asylum process. The app is inaccessible to many asylum-seekers, such as people without mobile phones, people with disabilities, and people who do not speak one of the three languages the app supports.

In Texas, Texas RioGrande Legal Aid is challenging the state’s efforts to shut down Annunciation House, an El Paso nonprofit that provides food, clothing, and temporary shelter to immigrants and asylum-seekers who have just crossed the border.

THIS YEAR, we were excited to make grants to several cases seeking to protect disability rights across the country.

For example, Disability Rights Texas is bringing a lawsuit against the city of San Antonio for failing to adequately plan for and respond to the needs of people with disabilities during the historic 2021 winter storm.

We also provided a grant to Vladeck, Raskin, & Clark, P.C. for a class action challenging the inaccessibility of New York City’s transit options for people with disabilities.

And at the intersection of prisoners’ rights and disability rights, Disability Rights North Carolina is seeking to ensure that people with severe mental health disabilities who have been arrested can receive adequate treatment — instead of being forced to remain in jail for months without medical treatment when they have not been convicted of a crime.