Combatting Hate

Paul, Weiss’ longstanding commitment to racial and social justice and to combating hate-driven violence and intimidation in all of its forms is a cornerstone of our pro bono practice.

For decades, Paul, Weiss has been at the forefront of legal efforts to promote racial justice. Assisting Thurgood Marshall in the seminal U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, the firm’s lawyers were instrumental in the effort to prohibit racial segregation. Today, we are at the forefront nationally of using novel legal strategies to hold neo-Nazi and other organized hate groups civilly accountable for their racist, violent actions.

Center to Combat Hate

Launched in 2024, Paul, Weiss’s Center to Combat Hate brings impact litigation to confront and redress hate-driven violence and intimidation. Through partnerships with civil rights organizations and educational institutions, as well as through independent litigation, the center fights to safeguard vulnerable communities and groups and foster a more just society.

Paul, Weiss has partnered closely with civil rights and legal advocacy organizations on several important cases seeking to hold hate groups accountable for their actions, and thereby deter potential participants from engaging in future violence and intimidation.

• Sines v. Kessler: On behalf of nine plaintiffs, our lawyers and co-counsel sued the leadership of violent hate groups, winning a highly consequential verdict in 2021, and sending a powerful message against hate and violence. The case is widely viewed as a blueprint for civil litigation targeting such hate groups.
  
  On the weekend of August 11-12, 2017, hundreds of neo-Nazis and other organized hate groups descended on Charlottesville, Virginia for a march and rally. This was not a peaceful protest but rather the culmination of a meticulously planned conspiracy to bring violence to Charlottesville after months of online organizing fueled by racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of hate. The events of that weekend have been seared into our nation’s collective memory: menacing hordes of tiki-torch-wielding extremists chanting “Jews will not replace us;” swaths of armed neo-Nazis brutally assaulting peaceful protesters; and bloodied bodies strewn across a narrow street after James Alex Fields Jr. intentionally barreled his car through a crowd, killing Heather Heyer and injuring many others.
  
  In October 2017, in the wake of the devastation wrought by the violence in Charlottesville that weekend, a coalition of three law firms filed a civil conspiracy lawsuit against two dozen defendants, including the leaders and foot soldiers of the neo-Nazi and other organized hate groups, on behalf of nine Virginia residents who were seriously injured in the violence on August 11-12, 2017. The lawsuit leveraged a 19th century law written to curb the Ku Klux Klan and alleged a conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence under that statute and under Virginia’s state conspiracy law.
  
  Using cutting-edge discovery techniques and persistence, the plaintiffs’ legal team won numerous motions to compel and obtained sanctions against numerous defendants that included jail time, financial penalties, adverse inferences, and, against one defendant, facts deemed admitted. Plaintiffs’ counsel also won the right to present expert testimony from a leading expert on the white supremacist movement and a preeminent scholar on anti-Semitism.
  
  The four-week trial, held amid heavy security in October and November 2021, “came at an extraordinary moment for America’s judicial system,” and was “like none other in recent memory,” the Washington Post noted. During trial, the plaintiffs were subjected to hate speech and doxing online. In a historic victory on November 23, 2021, a federal jury found as to each defendant a conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence, awarding over $26 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the nine plaintiffs. Punitive damages were subsequently reduced by the trial judge and then, in July 2024, were partially restored through an appeal to the Fourth Circuit. Following the verdict, Paul, Weiss partner Karen Dunn won The American Lawyer’s “Litigator of the Week” recognition for the trial achievement, and in September 2023, Karen, Paul, Weiss partner Jessica Phillips and co-counsel from Kaplan Hecker & Fink were featured in an HBO Original documentary on the four-year litigation, No Accident.
  
  The case forges a new playbook by deploying traditional principles of conspiracy law against individuals who had planned, organized and perpetrated racially motivated violence in the most untraditional of ways, in conjunction with novel uses of historic law. Such cases may win significant damages, draining violent hate groups of funds that otherwise might be used to hold similar events and foment violence. The case also demonstrates the importance of scouring the universe for sources of evidence. The plaintiffs’ counsel discovered racist podcast recordings of the defendants, video footage shot on iPhones by local activists and messages leaked by an anonymous group from the private social media channels the defendants used to organize the conspiracy.
  
  
• Suing on Behalf of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church Following Racially Motivated Attack: In December 2020, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law reached out to Paul, Weiss to join forces in bringing a lawsuit on behalf of a historic Black church, the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal church, seeking redress for a racially motivated attack on the church in December 2020.
  
  In 2023, in a blistering order awarding judgment, the court found that, in the attack on AME “all of the defendants acted with an evil, discriminatory motive based on race,” and that “defendants’ unlawful conduct was reprehensible to an extreme degree.”
  
  The court ultimately awarded the church more than $2.8 million, including $1 million in punitive damages. The punitive damages award was more than 27 times the amount of compensatory damages — and the fourth-highest amount ever awarded against white supremacists. Paul, Weiss is currently working to enforce the award.
  
  On July 1, 2024, we filed suit to enforce the $2.8 million judgment. The new lawsuit, filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, alleges that the defendants engaged in fraudulent activity to prevent the church from collecting the judgment.
  
  
• Representing D.C. in Lawsuit Regarding Capitol Violence: The Anti-Defamation League and States United Democracy Center brought in Paul, Weiss and co-counsel in a federal lawsuit on behalf of the District of Columbia to seek recovery for harm to police officers related to violent conduct by protestors at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The lawsuit seeks to recover damages for the substantial costs the district incurred as a result of the attack, particularly the physical and emotional injuries suffered by officers in the district’s Metropolitan Police Department. The complaint details how various groups planned, recruited, publicized, funded and carried out a coordinated violent attack intended to interfere with the functioning of government and overturn a lawful election.
  
  
• Representing Plaintiffs in Case Concerning Racist Violence in Richmond: On October 21, 2021, members of a hate group spray painted over a massive, colorful mural in a public park in a majority-Black community in Richmond, Virginia, honoring Richmond-born tennis legend Arthur Ashe near the once-segregated courts where the young Grand Slam champion learned to play.
  
  On October 18, 2022, two Richmond residents filed suit against the group and several of its officers and members, looking to the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and co-counsel Paul, Weiss and co-counsel for legal representation. Their federal lawsuit filed in Eastern District of Virginia claims that the vandalism represented an act of intimidation, and accuses the defendants of targeting the neighborhood, making the neighborhood feel unsafe. The lawsuit alleges conspiracy to violate civil rights under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 as well as intimidation based on racial animosity under Virginia state law, among other claims.
  
  In March 2024, the court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss, and the case is moving into discovery. In December 2024, we secured a partial settlement as to five defendants. The terms of the settlement, which are not public, redress the vandalism and provide security to the plaintiffs and the Battery Park community against further action by the settling defendants. The remaining named defendants are currently in default.
  
  
• Representing a Jewish Woman in Lawsuit Regarding Anti-Semitic Violence: The Southern Poverty Law Center brought suit on behalf of a Jewish woman who was the victim of a neo-Nazi “troll storm” of harassment and threats, and recovered a $14 million judgment against the defendant. They enlisted Paul, Weiss as co-counsel to help enforce the $14 million judgment. Paul, Weiss obtained an arrest warrant against the defendant, who has gone into hiding, and is working to track down his assets.