by Julie Yates | Sep 16, 2020 | News
The Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center (CREEC), along with co-counsel Goldstein, Borgen, Dardarian & Ho (GBDH), reached a landmark settlement with the City of San Jose on behalf of a class of persons with mobility disabilities. The settlement requires San Jose to install or remediate over twenty-seven thousand accessible curb ramps throughout the City over the next eighteen years, and to appropriate more than $130 million to fund this work. Importantly, class members are able to request curb ramp construction and remediation at specific locations according to this settlement. The settlement was approved by the Court on September 2, 2020. Curb ramps provide people with mobility disabilities a safe way to get on and off sidewalks as they travel through the pedestrian right of way. In San Jose alone, there are approximately 157,000 people with mobility disabilities. Missing, broken, or poorly maintained curb ramps prevent people with mobility disabilities from safely using city sidewalks, crosswalks, and other walkways to participate in daily activities like getting to work or going to school. Tim Fox, Co-Executive Director at CREEC and attorney in this case commented, “We initiated this case after receiving reports of people experiencing life-threatening situations as a result of unsafe curb ramps – including being thrown out of their wheelchairs and onto the pavement of busy streets when the wheel of their chair became lodged in a curb ramp gap or hit other construction defects. One person had to wait for more than ten minutes on the pavement before someone stopped and helped them back into their chair. Clearly this is unacceptable.” In 2014 and in response to...
by Julie Yates | Sep 1, 2020 | News
We are thrilled to welcome Anne-Marie Bravo as CREEC’s newest intern! A third-year student and Public Interest Law Scholar (PILS) at Northeastern University School of Law (NUSL), Anne-Marie will be working full-time with CREEC’s Immigration Detention Accountability Program (IDAP) from August through November. Anne-Marie is deeply committed to advocating for immigrants with disabilities across all aspects of life. Her professional experiences have included work with immigrant and disability communities as an educator, research analyst, grant writer, and legal intern. Recently Anne-Marie was a legal intern at the Law Office of Jodi Goodwin in Harlingen, TX where she worked directly with refugees placed in Migrant “Protection” Protocols (MPP) in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. This work prompted her to delve deeper into the intersection of immigration and disability law. Anne-Marie states, “After several particularly impactful experiences in my recent internship, I began independently researching the intersection of immigration and disability law and found CREEC’s Immigration Detention Accountability Project. IDAP’s mission is a perfect fit for my professional interests. I know that my work at CREEC will take me deeper into the legal world at the intersection of immigration and disability law. As a person with disabilities myself and from a family with our own immigration experiences, I feel profoundly connected with CREEC’s mission and vision.” Prior to her interest in pursuing a law degree, Anne-Marie conducted budget and research analysis for La Unión del Pueblo Entero in San Juan, TX; was a middle school social studies teacher for Teach for America in Rio Grande Valley, TX; worked for the Texas Civil Rights Project in Austin, TX; and interned at both the Human...
