Historic Cases

Since 1966, CCR has pioneered daring and innovative legal strategies in pursuit of its mission to advance and protect the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Our work began on behalf of civil rights activists, and since then CCR has lent its expertise and support to virtually every popular progressive movement.

Many of the Center’s historic victories have established major legal precedents – from Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, which opened U.S. courts for victims of serious human rights violations from anywhere in the world to Rasul v. Bush, which established the right of Guantánamo detainees to challenge their detention.

Corrie et al. v. Caterpillar

Corrie v. Caterpillar was a federal lawsuit filed against Illinois-based Caterpillar, Inc. on behalf of the parents of Rachel Corrie and four Palestinian families whose relatives were killed or...
Updated: November 19, 2018

Matar et al v. Dichter

A federal class action lawsuit against Avi Dichter, former Director of Israel's General Security Service (GSS), on behalf of Palestinians who were killed or injured in 2002, when a one-ton bomb was...
Updated: November 19, 2018

Salaita v. Kennedy, et al.

A lawsuit against the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for firing Professor Steven Salaita from a tenured position over his tweets critical of Israel’s summer 2014 attack on Gaza.
Updated: September 15, 2016

State of New York v. Danny White, et al.

State of New York v. Danny White is a lawsuit challenging New York State’s attempts to evict Mohawk Native Americans from land that had been recognized as theirs in the Treaty of 1784. It also...
Updated: February 11, 2016

Brown, et al. v. Snyder, et al.

On March 16, 2011, the Republican Governor Richard Snyder signed into law Public Act No. 4, the Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act, also known as the “emergency...
Updated: April 29, 2014

Daniels, et al. v. the City of New York

A class action lawsuit to challenge the NYPD’s policy of conducting stop-and-frisks without reasonable suspicion of criminal activity as required by the Fourth Amendment. Additionally, the...
Updated: October 1, 2012

Goosby v. Town of Hempstead

The population of Hempstead, New York, which covers the heart of Long Island’s Nassau County, is 13 percent Black and Latino, but all of its six Republican council members lived in...
Updated: February 15, 2012

Shenandoah, et al. v. Halbritter

A suit on behalf of the Oneida Nation of New York against the U.S. Department of the Interior, charging that the government violated the Oneidas’ national sovereignty. The suit alleged that the...
Updated: February 10, 2012

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