Results
achieved in this firm’s recent cases include:
TRIAL VICTORY FOR HINDU TEMPLE LEADERS
The
swami and trustees of the Geeta Temple in Queens, New York City, hired Jonathan Robert Nelson in mid-2013 to replace their
former trial counsel one week before trial was scheduled to begin in a lawsuit that was brought to determine the leadership
of the temple. After nearly two weeks of trial, our clients prevailed and the complaint was dismissed. The case is on appeal
as of April, 2015.
DEFAMATION CLAIM DISMISSED AGAINST PASTOR
A pastor client of this
office won a defamation lawsuit when the Supreme Court in Kings County, New York, dismissed claims brought against him by
a dissident former member who had left his congregation to form a new church. Because the pastor and the former member disagreed
about what words were actually uttered, the court had to assume that the plaintiff's version was correct. Nevertheless, the
court found that because the allegedly defamatory words were spoken as a pastoral rebuke of actual misconduct, the court was
required to abstain from adjudicating the dispute, in order to avoid judicial interference in matters of church discipline.
ASYLUM
APPLICANTS PREVAIL
In recent decisions, this office obtained orders granting asylum to:
* a Pakistani
woman whose family had suffered persecution as Shi'ite muslims;
* a young Christian woman from Nigeria, educated
in the United States, who feared that she would be persecuted by Boko Haram;
* an evangelical Christian from Kazakhstan
who had suffered religious persecution there, but whose case had twice been rejected by the Board of Immigration Appeals.
Old
news from an earlier version of this page:
VICTORY FOR THE "HOMELESS ON THE
STEPS"
Jonathan Robert Nelson was lead counsel in Fifth Avenue Presbyterian
Church v. City of New York. In 2006, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a grant of summary judgment by U.S. District Judge Lawrence McKenna, who found that the City of New York had violated the church's rights by sweeping homeless people from the church's steps.
In October, 2006, the Supreme Court dismissed the City’s petition for certiorari seeking to reverse that
decision, bringing the five-year old case to a victorious end for the Church and other plaintiffs.
In
December, 2001, the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church sued the City of New York to stop the police from rousting homeless people who were sleeping outside at night on
church property. In the late 1990's, after years of experience in running a formal homeless shelter inside its building, the
Church also adopted a formal policy of hospitality toward the "street homeless" who were sleeping outside on its
property. The church made its bathrooms available to them at the beginning and end of each night, set rules, organized a daily
disposal routine for cardboard sleeping boxes, and provided a wake-up call and coffee for the sleepers each morning. Through
staff members and volunteers, the Church also began to learn the names and histories of its homeless neighbors, to befriend
them, and to intercede for them, so they could obtain benefits, reconcile with families and friends, and find a way "off
the streets." The City cooperated with the Church's hospitality policy from 1999 through 2001, and in 1999 the police commissioner told the New York Times that he acknowledged the Church's right
to let people sleep on its property.
However, in the month before Christmas, 2001, the administration
of Mayor Giuliani decided that its "zero tolerance" policy meant that churches could not be permitted to allow rough
sleepers on their property. Over the course of several nights in early December, the police came in force to the Church in
the middle of the night, banged on cardboard boxes with night sticks, and told the homeless sleepers to leave, or be arrested
for disturbing the peace. Mayor Giuliani’s successor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, continued to defend his predecessor’s
policy.
This office filed suit against the City in collaboration with the New York Civil Liberties Union and Katherine Pringle, a partner in the law firm of Friedman, Kaplan, Seiler & Adelman, and obtained a preliminary injunction. This firm then collaborated with Ms. Pringle and another lawyer, Kenneth E. Lee, in conducting discovery and preparing summary judgment papers, resulting in a permanent injunction from Judge McKenna in October, 2004. On appeal of the preliminary and permanent injunctions, the Church was represented by Carter G. Phillips, Edward R. McNicholas and others from Sidley Austin’s Washington, DC office, with continued input from this office and the other lawyers.
The
Fifth Avenue case raised issues of basic importance under the First Amendment. The City attempted to use common law "nuisance"
principles, sidewalk regulations, city charter police power provisions, and arguments about the proper scope of religious
action, to stop part of the Church’s ministry to homeless neighbors. Despite its positive outcome, the case showed that
tension and conflict continue over the proper role of religion in issues of social welfare – and that the courts still
have an important role to play in the preservation of religious freedom.
(For the text of the
relevant decisions, and samples of press comment on the case, click For the Record. Mr. Nelson is a member of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. This web page reflects his personal views
only.)
AMICUS BRIEF BRINGS BIG RESULTS
This office
submitted an amicus curiae brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in support of a motion to rehear the court’s decision in Li v. Gonzales, 420 F.3d 500 (2005). The brief argued that the court’s decision flouted Congress’s intent under the International Religious Freedom Act by denying asylum to a Christian who was persecuted by the Chinese Government for engaging in a forbidden
religious practice – namely, worshiping in a house church. We were honored to represent the Christian Legal Society, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the National Association of Evangelicals, and the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission on the brief. The Fifth Circuit vacated its decision after receiving the amicus briefs. For more information
about the case, see Jonathan R. Nelson, "Shaking the Pillars: An Asylum Applicant Shakes Loose Some Unusual Relief," 83 Interpreter Releases 1 (January 3, 2006).
APPELLATE VICTORIES IN ASYLUM
CASES
2006 saw the following results in asylum appeals handled by this office:
* The Board of Immigration Appeals granted a motion filed by one of our Ukrainian Baptist clients to reconsider his case, and sent
the case back to the Immigration Judge. The BIA found that the Immigration Judge had failed to give the asylum applicant an
opportunity to explain the contradictions he perceived in his testimony, and that the applicant’s first appellate lawyer
had deprived him of his right to appeal by filing a negligent brief. (We did not represent this client in earlier stages of
the case.)
* Following a remand from the BIA, a Russian client of this office left the United
States on a grant of voluntary departure to begin a new life in Canada; and received a ten-year visa that allowed her to return
to the US as a visitor. The BIA decision granted our motion to reconsider the denial of her asylum claims, based on changed
country conditions, ineffective assistance of counsel and numerous errors of the Immigration Judge. Our motion was supported
by an amicus brief filed by Amnesty International USA, the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, and the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies. (We did not represent this client in earlier stages of the case.)
* Another Ukrainian
Baptist’s case went back before the Immigration Judge following a remand from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The
government stipulated to a remand when confronted, in our appellate brief, by the Immigration Judge’s obvious errors
in deciding our client’s case. A new decision is expected to come in 2007. (We did not represent this client at trial
or in her initial appeal to the Board.)
In addition, a family of Pakistani Christians who feared
persecution based on their conversion from Islam were granted asylum in December, 2005 after this office prepared their asylum
application and supporting papers, and then filed a motion to change venue when their case was assigned to a notorious Immigration
Judge whose asylum denial rate of 98% was among the highest in the country. (This office did not represent the clients following
their change of venue.)
