Boston Nonprofit Emerges as Legal Engine of Trump Resistance

A Boston-based nonprofit civil rights organization with just eight staff attorneys has established itself as a significant threat to President Donald Trump’s federal immigration policies.

Lawyers for Civil Rights, one of eight local affiliates of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, has already hit the administration with three lawsuits challenging its policies on birthright citizenship, sanctuary cities, and a humanitarian temporary protected status program.

With more suits in the works, the organization is becoming a core piece of the Democrats’ opposition to the administration—which has relied in part on filing cases before receptive courts. It’s secured some early legal victories and is poised for more, immigration experts say, which the group hopes will protect vulnerable communities in Massachusetts and across the country.

Reena Parikh, who directs the Civil Rights Clinic at Boston College Law School, said she thinks the plaintiffs have a good chance of prevailing in all three cases. It’s clear Lawyers for Rights “narrowly tailored” each of its immigration lawsuits and brought only “what are going to be the most successful legal claims,” Parikh said.

“Federal judges in particular were really the bulwarks that prevented the worst excesses of the first Trump administration,” said the group’s litigation director, Oren Sellstrom, in an interview at the group’s downtown Boston office last week. Going into Trump’s second term, “We knew that he would try maneuvers that were not legal, that harmed our client communities, and that would require pushback in court.”

The group, which files all of its cases in Massachusetts, acknowledged the promise its appellate district holds in this moment. The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has the highest percentage of active judges appointed by Democratic presidents, making it a popular venue for Democratic attorneys general and liberal groups to file lawsuits. Of the more than 100 major lawsuits challenging Trump executive actions so far, 11 have been filed in Massachusetts federal court.

“We do have a strong bench both at the District Court and at the First Circuit, and we’re fortunate to be in this jurisdiction,” said Sellstrom.

Immigration Lawsuits

Lawyers for Civil Rights occupies the fifth floor of a building in Boston’s financial district that also houses a life insurer and a shipping services company. Its attorneys trade ideas at four pushed-together tables in the office’s central gathering space, where a Martin Luther King Jr. quote is painted on the wall: “Boston must be a testing ground for the ideal of freedom.”

The group’s first case against the second Trump administration hit the docket on Inauguration Day, challenging the executive order narrowing birthright citizenship —an issue the US Supreme Court is likely to weigh in on. That suit was followed by a similar effort by Democratic attorneys general, and the two groups together secured a preliminary injunction from a Massachusetts trial judge that was upheld Tuesday by the First Circuit.

John Eastman, a founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, said the injunction demonstrates “what little regard trial judges are giving to the actual historical record.” Eastman, an attorney who played a major role in challenging the results of the 2020 election, has for decades opined that the 14th Amendment doesn’t confer automatic citizenship to those born on US soil.

While Eastman said he doesn’t believe in the merits of the group’s cases, “they’ll win some temporary injunctions by lower court judges.”

“I don’t have any more optimism for a faithful application of the law when it gets up to the court of appeals,” Eastman said, adding that the First Circuit is “fairly politically skewed.”

Parikh said she thinks the cases will, at minimum, present a pathway for the Supreme Court to rule against the Trump administration on procedural grounds. Eastman said the court could use the cases as a vehicle to lay down guardrails on immigration, something that could “backfire in a big way for the organization.”

A spokesperson for the Justice Department said it “has already been fighting in court to vigorously defend President Trump’s agenda and will continue to do so.”

Outsized Impact

Lawyers for Civil Rights brought in more than $3 million in revenue in FY 2023, according to tax filings, and relies on charitable contributions and pro bono partnerships with law firms including WilmerHale, Foley Hoag LLP, and Ropes & Gray LLP.

Trump’s recent targeting of law firms like Perkins Coie adversarial to his policies “certainly presents some new challenges,” Sellstrom said, but the group’s partners “have always been steadfast in their commitment to taking on pro bono cases even in the face of controversy and adversity.”

Trump isn’t the only Republican the group has targeted; in 2022 it sued sued Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for transporting migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. A federal court dismissed part of their case last March, but allowed their claims that a plane company falsely imprisoned the migrants to proceed.

In the wake of the US Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to roll back race-based affirmative action, Lawyers for Civil Rights also fileda civil rights complaint accusing Harvard University of giving white applicants preferential treatment through legacy admissions. At the local level, voting rights and police accountability are other priorities.

“They’re successful and also innovative,” Parikh said, referencing a case they worked together on when she was leading a clinic at Yale Law School. The groups, in partnership with WilmerHale, used a first-of-its-kind legal strategy to secure the release of individuals who were detained by ICE in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sellstrom said the group chooses its cases based on the needs of the local community groups it works with, while keeping an eye on the effect litigation could have on national policies.

“We’re focused on cases that will have the most impact, period,” Sellstrom said.