Cristóbal Joshua Alex

Cristóbal Joshua Alex

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Josh is the Director of the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights. He is responsible for rolling out strategic campaigns in national and international forums, building alliances, and overseeing media and communication efforts. Josh joined the campaign after practicing civil rights law with MacDonald Hoague & Bayless, the leading civil rights firm in the Northwest. During that time Josh focused his practice on police and governmental misconduct, including important cases dealing with prisoner rights, police shootings, discrimination, and the constitutionality of various state laws.

Josh was the student body president at the University of Washington School of Law, and led rallies and marches opposing Anti-Affirmative Action initiatives. He helped organize successful legislative campaigns to give undocumented students access to higher education, and fund an unprecedented $40 million in farm-worker housing. Following law school Josh served as the youngest president in the history of the Latina/o Bar Association, and brought attention to standardized testing systems that disproportionately impact people of color, and led voter registration drives. While serving as chair of the Diversity Committee, Josh developed the Pathways to Law mentorship program that pairs community college students of color with attorneys of color -- the first of its kind in the country. Josh also co-founded and chaired the Farm Worker Justice Project and the Latino Political Action Committee.

Josh has received the Outstanding Young Lawyer Award, El Centro de la Raza's Leadership Award, was a recipient of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund Scholarship and is consistently named "rising star" in the area of constitutional law by Washington Law and Politics. He is admitted to the United States District Court in the Western and Eastern Districts of Washington, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of the United States, and was recently appointed chair of the Civil Rights Section of the Hispanic National Bar Association.

Blog Entries by Cristóbal Joshua Alex

Supreme Court To Decide How Much and How Often Government Can Violate Your Civil Rights

1 Comments | Posted October 8, 2008 | 06:36 PM (EST)


Qualified immunity is one of those absurd abstract legal concepts that you never care about until the police shoot you in the back while you're leaving the mall. (True story, but we'll get to that later.) The Supreme Court next week will hear a case that may lead to a...

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A McCain Administration Would Set Women's Equality Back For Decades

12 Comments | Posted October 2, 2008 | 02:13 PM (EST)


Women could lead starkly different lives depending on whether they live under a McCain/Palin or Obama/Biden Administration. At risk is their economic well-being, their health, and their very right to control their own bodies. Looking beyond the sound bites and attack ads, the candidate's actions portray strikingly divergent views on...

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Congress Pushes Back Against Supreme Court, Returns Civil Rights to People with Disabilities

Posted September 22, 2008 | 10:01 AM (EST)


Congress, in a stinging rebuke of the Supreme Court, has passed the ADA Amendments Act, which reverses a series of Supreme Court cases that made it nearly impossible to vindicate civil rights enshrined in the Americans with Disabilities Act. In passing the ADA Amendments Act, Congress is finally pushing back...

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Forget Palin, What About The Platforms?

Posted September 9, 2008 | 10:25 AM (EST)


The nation's attention these last two weeks has been on the flashy conventions, the big speeches, and Sarah Palin's bulldog lipstick. But what hasn't garnered much interest are the real differences in the two parties' platforms. A comparison of the Republican and Democratic platforms on judicial nominations and civil...

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Right-Wing Supreme Court Draws Ire Of Senate Judiciary Committee

15 Comments | Posted July 23, 2008 | 10:29 AM (EST)


What do the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Enron and Worldcom scandals have in common? Corporate greed run amok? Lax government oversight? How about a Supreme Court that has shifted dangerously to the right and is now the most pro-business Court since the monopoly greasing "Lochner-era" Court of the...

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Halliburton, Rape and the Failure of Justice

Posted February 12, 2008 | 11:16 AM (EST)


Something odd happened in Texas just a few days ago. Tracy Barker, a former Halliburton employee who was sexually assaulted by her co-workers, had her case against Halliburton thrown out by a Bush-appointed federal judge. So why is this odd?

Well, actually, it may seem odd, but it's no...

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Republicans Court Voters, Democrats Silent on the Courts

Posted January 7, 2008 | 12:18 PM (EST)


Last Thursday, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee shook things up with major victories in the Iowa primary. As the candidates take their fight to New Hampshire, Americans are beginning to get a good sense of where the leading candidates stand on important issues. We have heard plenty so far in...

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The Rise of the Federalist Society and the Erosion of Justice

Posted November 19, 2007 | 09:11 PM (EST)


Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the nation's most important employment law--prohibiting discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. In 1991 Congress extended Title VII's protections beyond private employees to include state employees as well.

But...

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Colbert Announces: What Does It Mean for the Courts?

Posted October 18, 2007 | 09:56 AM (EST)


Last night, National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights' staffers were on the set of The Colbert Report when Stephen Colbert officially announced that he would run for President of the United States of America. While the Campaign cannot officially endorse any person in the already crowded race, we can offer...

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