Public Interest Briefs

Los Angeles Center Open Washington, D.C. Branch Office

In October the Center opened its new office in Washington, D.C. The office marks a significant expansion of the Center’s legal activities and makes the Center a major focus of public interest law in the United States.

Mike McIntosh, head of the McIntosh Foundation, was the first to propose that the Center open an office in Washington. Impressed by the Center’s achievements in California, he thought that its high quality public interest practice could have a major impact in Washington. After consultations with McIntosh and others, the Center’s board of trustees concluded that there was a void in Washington, D.C. public interest practice that the Center could ideally fill.

For example, there has been little public interest litigation in the highly important area of arms control. Even though certain federal statutes provide for substantial control on weapons procurement and proliferation, the controls and regulations are often disregarded. The first Washington Center case, filed in January, charges the Defense Department with violating critical federal statutes in the process of deciding on the “Dense Pack” basing mode for the MX missile. (A summary of the case, Friends of the Earth, et al. v. Weinberger, et al., is on p. 2.) Similarly, with the diminished federal enforcement of legislation guaranteeing equal opportunities in employment, there is need for a substantial increase in the number of cases brought by privately funded public interest law firms to correct nationwide instances of job discrimination. The Center’s Washington office will also work on cases dealing with environmental protection, corporate responsibility, and governmental accountability.

The McIntosh Foundation and numerous other foundations have provided the Center with substantial grants to help fund a portion of the Washington operation for its first three years. The Center has already hired three lawyers to staff the Washington office, including Nick Yost, former general counsel to the Council on Environmental Quality in the Carter Administration; Katherine Ransel, a seven-year veteran of civil rights and employment litigation in the U.S. Justice Department; and Ken Goldenberg, a graduate of Harvard Law School who recently completed a clerkship with Federal District Judge John R. Bartels. We will fill a fourth position shortly.

Although open only a short time, the Center’s Washington office has been contacted by many Washington-based public interest groups who raise the possibility of asking the Center to bring litigation on their behalf.

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