Paul, Weiss obtained a significant victory on behalf of New York City charter schools in New York State Supreme Court when Justice Barbara Jaffe dismissed a complaint filed against the Board of Education (BOE) by a group of parents of public school students. Plaintiffs sought to require the BOE to collect approximately $100 million in rent from charter schools that are currently permitted to use BOE facilities for free, and they also challenged certain funding practices as violative of the right to a sound basic education under the New York State constitution. A group of charter schools, including Paul, Weiss clients Harlem Success Academies 1 and 4, intervened as defendants. 

As reported in the New York Law Journal, earlier this week the Second Circuit denied en banc review of its 2012 decision in Young v. Conway, which affirmed a grant of habeas corpus in a case that turned on testimony regarding in-court eyewitness identification. Paul, Weiss filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Innocence Project that discussed the extensive body of scientific literature on the unreliability of eyewitness identifications and how this literature confirmed the unreliability of the eyewitness identification that led to Mr. Young's conviction in state court. 

Paul, Weiss represents Edith ("Edie") Windsor in her historic lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  Litigation partner Roberta Kaplan argued the case before the United States Supreme Court on March 27, urging the Justices to affirm the decision of the Second Circuit below. 

Ms. Windsor spent 44 years together with her late spouse, Thea Spyer, but was forced to pay more than $360,000 in federal estate taxes because the federal government refused to recognize their marriage after Ms. Spyer's death solely because of DOMA. Had Ms. Windsor been married to a man, rather than a woman, she would not have had to pay any federal estate tax at all.

Paul, Weiss, in partnership with Immigration Equality, obtained asylum for a transgender woman from Turkey, where, because of widespread discrimination against transgendered persons, she was brutally attacked by both the police and civilians and struggled to find housing and employment. The client entered the United States on a student visa and filed an affirmative application for asylum. On April 17, she succeeded in her application following the submission of materials prepared by Paul, Weiss and an interview at the asylum office in Lyndhurst, New Jersey.

Judge Deborah Batts of the Southern District of New York granted in full a motion for summary judgment by the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center Foundation, Inc., represented on a pro bono basis by Paul, Weiss, in litigation brought by American Atheists and three of its members. In the case, the members challenged the proposed display of an artifact shaped as a cross in the September 11 Museum.

Paul, Weiss and Human Rights First obtained asylum for a woman from Burkina Faso who had been subjected to female genital mutilation by her grandmother and was in a forced marriage to a man many years her senior. She feared that her young daughter would be circumcised, as well. The Immigration Court judge found that her testimony was credible, that she had been persecuted, and that she had a well-founded fear of persecution on account of her membership in a particular social group. 

Paul, Weiss obtained a victory in an unemployment insurance appeal with pro bono partner Volunteers of Legal Service (VOLS). As a participant in the VOLS Unemployment Insurance Advocacy Project, the firm represents clients whose employers have objected to their receipt of unemployment insurance benefits.

A Paul, Weiss pro bono client was released from prison after serving more than thirty-two years in connection with the sale of narcotics in upstate New York in 1980. Despite his record as a model inmate and his numerous accomplishments while incarcerated, the client, an honorably discharged Vietnam veteran, was denied parole nine times between 2002 and 2012, due largely to organized and inaccurate opposition by a police benevolence association.

Paul, Weiss pro bono client Myrtle P. Jarmon Early Childhood Educational Center, Inc., a nonprofit day care center, entered into a four-year collaboration agreement with Clifford Glover Day Care Center, Inc. The execution of this agreement was the culmination of a year-long effort between the day care centers, both located in Jamaica, Queens, to provide services in connection with the EarlyLearn Contract awarded to Clifford Glover by the New York City Administration for Children's Services. The EarlyLearn Contract contemplated that Myrtle P. Jarmon and Clifford Glover would share certain resources, including employees, allowing both day care centers to service a greater number of children and families and achieve administrative cost-savings and efficiencies.

Paul, Weiss and the Legal Aid Society achieved a victory for an incarcerated client and her newborn daughter, allowing the two to stay together for up to 18 months in the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility Nursery Program rather than being separated at birth. The client was initially denied entry to the Nursery Program by prison officials solely because her crime, which occurred ten years earlier, involved violence. Arguing that under New York Correction Law 611 this was not a valid basis for denial, and pointing to the client's outstanding prior parenting, institutional history and efforts to improve herself, Paul, Weiss first obtained a TRO in late December 2012.