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BY: | DATE: Jan 06, 2021

CUNY Law faculty call President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris to action in their first 100 days of office.

 


“With an onslaught of laws and policies that have banned people for poverty, their religion, their race, to the use of detention, family separation and displacement to deter, to the complete evisceration of asylum protections, the laundry list of immigration policies the new administration must immediately work to reverse is endless. But a simple reversal of these policies is a temporary fix. My hope is for a creative, radical, and permanent withdrawal from the narratives, structure, and goals of our current immigration system. Instead, let’s create broadened and flexible pathways to protect displaced people, an independent immigration court system with rigorous constitutional protections and access to counsel, and recognize the right that all immigrants, regardless of race, education, class or history, have to stability and dignity.”

– – Professor Nermeen Arastu, Co-Director of the Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic


“Recognizing and addressing environmental racism must be a priority. Across the country, Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic residents are exposed to higher levels of pollution than are white Americans. One direct result is that BIPOC Americans are more likely to suffer asthma or other pollution-related diseases, and are more vulnerable to COVID-19. By prioritizing regulatory enforcement and policy initiatives that reduce pollution in vulnerable BIPOC communities, the Biden-Harris administration can dramatically improve overall public health and welfare, while simultaneously achieving racial justice goals and reducing the United States’ carbon footprint. In short, focusing on environmental justice is a win-win-win approach.”

– – Professor Rebecca Bratspies, Director of the Center for Urban Environmental Reform 


“As the right most preservative of other rights, the Biden-Harris administration should give priority to Voting Rights. This means, with a Democratic Senate, a new voting rights act to increase registration and restore statutory tools to stomp out voter suppression. If he doesn’t get the Senate, he must force such changes through the use of Executive Orders and the Federal Regulatory process. He must also overhaul the Department of Justice and develop an aggressive Civil Rights Division that makes voter suppression top priority and will intervene with lawsuits and case interventions in litigation throughout the country where those rights are at stake.”

– – Professor Frank Deale


“President Biden’s administration must give close attention to the appointment and confirmation of federal judges to improve diversity, inclusion, and fealty to equality, justice, and the rule of law as noted in Professor Gomez-Velez’s recent article Judicial Selection: Diversity, Discretion, Inclusion, and the Idea of Justice, 48 Capital Law Review 285 (2020).

“The federal Department of Education must remedy Secretary DeVos’s abject leadership failures during the COVID-19. Biden’s incoming Education Secretary Miguel Cardona must provide clear guidance to the nation’s schools for safe, effective, and equitable distance learning and re-opening plans and urgent support to students who have experienced significant learning loss and widening achievement gaps, as discussed in Professor Gomez-Velez’s article Reimagining Public Education Equity After COVID-19:Will Public Voices From New York’s Epicenter Be Heard Over the Siren Song of Billionaires? forthcoming in the Fordham Urban Law Journal.

“Finally, the Biden administration must work to reconstruct and re-imagine the administrative state, restoring the use of facts, science, the rule of law, and equity to restore confidence in the federal government, democracy, and government service for public good as will be discussed in an upcoming CLE program by CUNY Law CLRN in which Professor Gomez-Velez and CUNY Law alumnus Ali Najmi will participate.”

– – Professor Natalie M. Gomez-Velez, Director of the Center for Latinx Rights & Equality


“The Biden-Harris administration is facing enormous challenges unlike those of almost any past presidents. In nutshell, how do you pay for a global war deployment and solve the problems of inequality, job decline, an economic recession, global warming, and the COVID-19 crisis all at once?

“The answer is you don’t. It’s time for an American president to change priorities and recognize that national defense first and foremost means a strong economy, a national health care system, and investments in education. We have for far too long responded to the special interests who profit from global military deployments at the expense of housing, health care, and schools.

“My hope for the new administration is that it will recognize this and just as Roosevelt offered a country in crisis a New Deal, the Biden-Harris administration will address our crisis with a Fair Deal for all Americans that puts domestic progress ahead of wasteful military spending.”

– – Professor Victor Goode


“Communities across the country are hurting economically. From an economic justice standpoint, we need to protect the right of workers to join a union and organize, raise the minimum wage to a living wage, guarantee a job and training to those who want it through public works programs, and ensure that families have access to health care and other basic benefits like a pension. In addition, we need to ensure that workers are not discriminated against based on their social identities.”

– – Professor Chaumtoli Huq, Co-Director of the Workers Rights Clinic


“My hope for the Biden-Harris administration is that it will center equity and the interests and needs of all people instead of centering the interests of the privileged. My hope is that this administration will create a climate conducive to fact-based domestic and international dialogue and policymaking in order to move us away from the devastating polarization we are living and serve the Nation by putting in place policies that lift up and protect historically excluded peoples so they too have the potential to thrive here. I would like to see a Biden-Harris 100-day plan that provides everyone with affordable, accessible health care, access to quality education, and one that provides the means for everyone to have safe, affordable housing and living wage work.”

– – Degna Levister, Associate Dean for Enrollment Management and Access Initiatives, Executive Director Pipeline to Justice


“I hope that the Biden-Harris administration reconsiders its big data policing programs. Not every tech innovation improves society, especially when it comes to policing. Police surveillance products rely on racist and erroneous technologies and datasets. The government is at crossroads where it can decide whether it will use these tools. I hope the Biden-Harris administration considers the harm caused by predictive analytics, biometric data, and other surveillance technologies before it partners with big tech to police us.”

– – Professor Sarah Lamdan


“Since the Biden-Harris administration is already planning to deal with issues relating to the pandemic, here is one hope that I would like the Biden-Harris administration to consider as well during the first 100 days – a good solution resolving the DACA issue. Reforming immigration law and policy will require a more comprehensive strategy and planning with various parties. But DACA is a discrete issue that many Americans are more likely willing to resolve. The children did not break the law, although their parents did. I think that the Biden-Harris administration can convince many of the moderate Republicans and (I guess) Conservatives to agree to a good solution to resolve DACA.”

– – Julie Lim, Professor Emerita


“Just as the pandemic has exposed racism as a public health crisis, it has reinforced this nation’s sorry tradition of economic inequality, to such a degree that we can now say that when white America has a cold, black and brown America gets coronavirus. Small businesses in marginalized communities eking out livelihoods have been wiped out after having been passed over for relief. Meanwhile, wealth concentrated and insulated in multinationals has increased exponentially and been prioritized for government assistance.

“It is my hope that the Biden-Harris administration will go beyond the ‘divine majesty’ of the law forbidding both the sole proprietorship and public company from liability protection and instead leverage government to advance social democracy. The Biden-Harris administration should embrace ideas such as Professor Carlos Berdejo’s proposal, appearing in a forthcoming article, for the adoption and implementation of a low-impact small business investment companies (LISBIC) program. This can ensure a more equitable recovery with equity for the very businesses historically excluded from the blessings of liberty.”

– – Professor Gregory Louis


“My hope is that President and Dr. Biden will highlight the full range of ways that people contribute to society and community, and will work to empower each person, young or old, to choose their own path, take their own time, and take good care. Unfortunately, there’s no app for that, just a great need for inspiration.”

– – Professor Lynn D. Lu, Co-Director of the Economic Justice Project


“The shattering public health and economic consequences of the COVID pandemic, and the corrosive effects of racial injustice that have frayed our social fabric, call for the federal government to restore policies that afford housing security and housing equity for vulnerable American families. Over decades, the Federal government’s disinvestment in public housing has left this unique public asset without the life support—adequate funding, meaningful regulatory oversight, and guidance for local housing authorities—essential to ensure that public housing can again become a trusted source of safe, sanitary, and affordable shelter and community support under public ownership and control.

“The federal government must also reassert leadership in enforcing the Fair Housing Act by signaling intent to reverse recent action at HUD that creates substantial impediments to proving disparate-impact housing discrimination. The Biden-Harris administration should further take immediate steps to begin the process of restoring the robust “affirmatively furthering fair housing” regulation that the Trump administration repealed, to ensure that local communities receiving HUD funds comply with fair housing mandates. These early actions will communicate the commitment of the Biden Presidency to achieving long-delayed housing justice for millions of Americans.”

– – Professor Andrea McArdle


“The Biden-Harris administration must follow through on its promise to halt all deportations on January 20, 2021. It must also stop the use of civil immigration detention immediately, as these have been documented as the sites of ongoing horrific human rights abuses, such as family separations, outbreaks of infectious diseases, and forced hysterectomies. Reconstruction of our immigration system is required. The administration will need to root out anti-immigrant bias in its leadership and within the ranks of federal agencies. It must also disband rogue agencies like ICE and CBP.

“Instead, the administration must elevate community leaders and organizers onto its policy team to re-imagine the fundamental mission of our immigration system. We should reject the antiquated web of exclusionary laws that have defined the immigration system for far too long. Instead, we should seek to draw in migrants and create stability through an attainable path to citizenship.”

– – Professor Talia Peleg, Co-Director of the Immigrant and Non-Citizen Rights Clinic


“The Biden-Harris administration should eliminate student loan debt in his first 100 days. Doing so can provide a much-needed stimulus for the economy, and narrow the racial wealth gap. The Biden-Harris administration should also fully fund public colleges and universities to make college free. This is a necessary step toward eliminating race and class disparities across all facets of our society.”

– – Professor Allie Robbins, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs


“Return to the 2014 Obama-Biden plan to normalize relations between the U.S. and Cuba; immediately reverse cruel financial sanctions measures harmful to civilian populations on multiple continents; restore the decades-long program of the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing (COPS) which was ended in 2017, which investigated and pressed legal remedies for ‘patterns and practices’ of abusive conduct and civil rights violations of local and state police departments.”

– – Professor Franklin Siegel


“During the first 100 days, the Biden-Harris administration can start to undo the Trump Administration’s attack on reproductive health care by repealing harmful regulations and policies, including regulations that gutted Title X, the federal family planning program, and the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate.

“Outside of the United States, the Trump administration has attacked international institutions and tried to rewrite human rights law to erase protections for gender rights, reproductive rights and social and economic rights.  In the first 100 days, the Biden-Harris administration should signal a break from these destructive policies by renouncing the Trump administration’s Unalienable Rights Report and ‘Protecting Life in Global Health Policy’ and repealing the Global Gag Rule.”

– – Professor Cindy Soohoo, Co-Director of the Human Rights & Gender Justice Clinic


“Our immigration system has been broken for many years, but under the last administration has become intolerably inhumane, especially to children. I believe the Biden-Harris administration will work to change the tenor of the national conversation about immigration and reverse the Trump-era damage to the system, but my wish list is more aspirational. I am hopeful Congress will legislate to rein in the agency discretion that has made such an incoherent mess of our immigration rules and regulations. We also desperately need an independent immigration court, not one working hand-in-glove with the Department of Justice.”

– – Professor Richard Storrow


“While much has been written about Donald Trump’s use of the presidential pardon power, the problem is not with the power but with the ways it is utilized. The Biden administration must build on the clemency initiative started during President Obama’s term, by releasing the thousands of people—regardless of crime of conviction or original sentence—who languish in prison for no reason other than enforcement of the brutal punishment paradigm that defines the criminal legal system. Simultaneously, the Biden-Harris Department of Justice must announce an immediate and permanent end to the death penalty and life without parole.”

– – Professor Steve Zeidman, Co-Director of the Defenders Clinic and The Second Look Project