Standing Against Hate

To help fight the scourge of antisemitism, Gibson Dunn was proud to partner with the Anti-Defamation League, Hillel International, and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, in launching the Campus Antisemitism Legal Line (“CALL”), a free legal protection helpline for students and professors on college campuses who have experienced antisemitic violence, hate, and discrimination.

CALL invites any student or professor who experiences an antisemitic incident on campus to submit an incident report at www.legal-protection.org. Anyone who submits an incident report will receive an intake call from a volunteer lawyer within 24 hours. After each intake, attorneys conduct in-depth information-gathering interviews and draft detailed memoranda summarizing the relevant information. CALL uses those memoranda to assess the potential for legal action, and, if appropriate, arrange for pro bono representation for students and other impacted individuals.

Since its founding in November 2023, CALL has received more than 830 incident reports from students and faculty at over 260 college campuses across the country. More than 50 attorneys from Gibson Dunn have participated in CALL’s important work, volunteering thousands of hours to providing critical support and guidance to students and faculty in the face of rising threats and acts of antisemitism. Over 350 attorneys, ranging from partners and associates at large law firms to solo practitioners across the country, have volunteered to join our efforts. We are committed to continuing to support the fight against antisemitism through CALL and other similar initiatives.

In 2025, building on CALL’s foundation, we also helped launch the ADL Legal Action Network. This unprecedented, coordinated network of law firms provides free legal assistance to victims of antisemitism. Gibson Dunn, alongside a steering committee of additional law firms, has brought in more than 40 firms across the United States to receive client referrals or provide support as co-counsel through this initiative. The ADL Legal Action Network provides victims with access to a national response system and a nationwide network of law firms who will assess relevant reports and, where warranted, conduct in-depth information-gathering interviews to help assess whether to provide pro-bono representation for victims.

Fighting for racial justice has long been an integral aspect of our pro bono practice. In one such case, we are representing Keith Puckett, a Black resident of the City of El Segundo, in a lawsuit against the City for racial profiling and unlawful detention by the El Segundo Police Department (“ESPD”) after he directly experienced racial profiling by ESPD twice in a two-month span in 2021. In one incident, six ESPD officers arrived outside Mr. Puckett’s home in the middle of the night and questioned him after having seen a Black man (a guest of Mr. Puckett’s) outside his home. The officers eventually said it was a simple misunderstanding and left. In the second incident, Mr. Puckett was pulled over after an ESPD officer drove past him in the opposite direction, did a U-turn, and falsely claimed the light above Mr. Puckett’s rear license plate wasn’t working. When the officer failed to discover any evidence of wrongdoing, he let Mr. Puckett go.

In April 2025, the Firm won a significant victory on behalf of Mr. Puckett when the Torrance Superior Court rejected an effort by the City to dismiss the case. The Court also denied the City’s motion to strike certain allegations in the complaints—including the City’s long history of racial discrimination and incidents of racial profiling of others by ESPD. The Court recognized the complaint was well pleaded and permitted the case to move forward, finding that Mr. Puckett “adequately identifie[d] a custom, policy, and/or practice of racial profiling by the City.”

When COVID-19 led to a surge in anti-Asian hatred, Gibson Dunn immediately stepped up as a leader in the national response. After co-founding the Alliance for Asian American Justice, an initiative to provide pro bono legal representation to victims of anti-Asian hate, Gibson Dunn teams across the Firm assisted individuals and families who had faced attack merely for having Asian heritage. Through these cases, we sought to amplify our clients’ voices, ensure accountability for wrongdoers, and reduce bigotry in our communities.

Earlier this year, we secured a settlement on behalf of Dr. Bidisha Rudra, who was the victim of an unprovoked and violent assault unleashed on a group of Indian American women. The suit arose from an August 24, 2022, incident in which Esmeralda Upton began an unprovoked and violent assault on Dr. Rudra and three other Indian American women in the parking lot of a Plano, Texas restaurant. The attack lasted several minutes, during which Ms. Upton screamed racial epithets, struck the women, and threatened to shoot them. The Alliance for Asian American Justice referred the case to Gibson Dunn, which represented Dr. Rudra in a civil suit against Ms. Upton for assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Ms. Upton separately pleaded guilty to three criminal counts of assault and one criminal count of making terroristic threats, with each count accompanied by hate-crime enhancements as a result of her attack.