During his six years as Corporation Counsel,
Steve played a lead role advising the Mayor
and working on myriad other issues, including:
Q Renegotiating the City’s parking meters
concession agreement to eliminate a $1
billion past liability
Q Negotiating a landmark reparations agreement
resolving thirty-year-old claims of
torture and coerced confessions by more
than seventy African-American men
Q Quarterbacking the City’s cooperation
with, and various reforms in response
to, the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil
rights investigation of the Chicago Police
Department
Q Successfully defending, against union
challenges, Chicago Public School’s
(CPS’s) lengthening of its school day by
almost two hours, resulting in students
receiving the equivalent of two full academic
years of education
Q Negotiating a landmark agreement with
the ACLU in which the City agreed to
cease illegal stop and frisks
Q Investigating and filing the first suit
filed by a City against the pharmaceutical
companies that manufacture and sell
OxyContin and other opioids; negotiating
a landmark settlement with one of the
largest pharma companies
Steve had planned to take the City job only
for a couple of years. He tried to leave three
times, and each time, Mayor Emanuel persuaded
him to stay, to work on the crisis de
jour. Two years became six. But Steve made a
real difference in those years. The commerce
of Chicago thrived.
CHAPTER THREE –
PRO BONO AS ART
Steve has been an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago
Law School since 2017, teaching courses on Law and Public Policy,
Appellate Advocacy and Advanced Evidence. And when Steve
returned to Kirkland a few months after he had left the City job
in 2017, there was no thought about whether or how much Steve
might do pro bono work. It just sort of happened. But in the five
years since he rejoined the firm, he has spent 90% of his time on pro
bono matters, important pro bono matters.
Wilmer Garcia Ramirez started working in the coffee fields of Guatemala
when he was six. Facing extreme poverty, he risked his life
to come to the United States for a better life. He arrived in the US
at age seventeen, was identified as an unaccompanied alien child
(UAC), and was placed in a shelter by the Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS), the agency with jurisdiction over alien minors.
When Garcia turned eighteen, jurisdiction was assumed by US
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which immediately
took him into custody at an ICE adult detention facility – a prison.
Sulma Hernandez Alfaro came to the United States at the age of sixteen
to escape severe violence and abuse in Honduras, was identified
as an UAC, and placed in a shelter. On her 18th birthday, she was
transferred from the shelter to an ICE adult detention center.
The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2013
states that when unaccompanied immigrant children turn eighteen,
ICE “shall consider placement in the least restrictive setting available
after taking into account the individual’s danger to self, danger to
the community, and risk of flight.” But ICE had routinely and systemically
failed to comply with the law and simply locked up people
like Garcia and Sulma. Partnering with the National Immigrant
Justice Center, Steve brought a class action. After an eighteen-day
trial in 2020, a federal district court in D.C. issued a 170-page decision
which ruled in the class’s favor on all liability issues. After
fourteen months of further proceedings, the Court granted the relief
sought by the class, including a nationwide injunction permanently
barring illegal detentions. The case continues, but to date Steve has
devoted more than 4,000 hours of his time; Kirkland has devoted
more than 17,000 hours.
And here’s a little bonus. Steve and his team have done meaningful
and impactful work which has freed thousands of young people
from illegal detention. And in doing it, Steve was able to use the
trials to give five different young lawyers the opportunity to examine
their first witness in a trial.
FALL 2022 JOURNAL 36