Our Legal Work: Public Cases and Hidden Hours

Dear Supporter Ji,

In my six years as the Sikh Coalition’s Legal Director, I’ve been proud to celebrate many of our organization’s high-profile legal victories, from hate crime convictions in violent assaults to employment discrimination victories against major companies and government agencies to the U.S. Supreme Court citing one of our amicus briefs this year.

Beyond these high profile victories, I also want you to know that the support you provide through your donations helps our expert legal team provide free legal services in so many more cases—many of which we can’t publicize at all due to privacy obligations. 

One kind of case we can rarely speak about are instances of school bullying. Except for the most severe situations, where violence or even prosecutions are involved, we often choose not to talk about these cases to protect the privacy of students. The lack of publicity, however, doesn’t undermine the fact that our team spends hundreds of hours advocating for clients against school districts, counseling families in distress, attending disciplinary hearings, and training teachers and administrators to better handle anti-Sikh discrimination within their schools.

We also often can’t talk about workplace discrimination cases. Every client’s situation is different, and while some are ready and willing to publicly tell their stories, others must remain anonymous for various reasons—including the fear of retribution from their employer. Regardless of whether we can talk about a given case, though, our attorneys work equally hard to bring about systemic, impactful change in workplaces across the country and ensure employers are held accountable for discriminatory conduct.

The bottom line is that our legal team of five full-time staff fields an average of more than 200 intakes per year. When you make the decision to donate to the Sikh Coalition, you aren’t just funding the legal cases that make headlines in The New York Times or stories on CNN: You are effectively providing aid to sangat members with a huge variety of legal issues—great and small, public and private—to ultimately combat the religious discrimination our community continues to endure. Every sangat member we are able to help, whether we can speak about their situation publicly or not, is a victory for all of us, because our goal is always to eliminate hate and decrease discrimination for not just our client, but the next Sikh who might face similar challenges. 

We are proud to serve as the first and best line of legal defense for our community, and we are grateful that we do so with the support of sangat members like you. Thank you for your continued investment in this shared mission.

Chardi Kala,

Amrith Kaur Aakre
Legal Director
The Sikh Coalition