The White & Case Asian Affinity Network, in collaboration with the Asian American Bar Association of New York (AABANY), invites you to a virtual trial reenactment and speaker discussion on the history of Asian American Pacific Islander litigation over education. Long before SFFA v. Harvard and Brown v. Board of Education, AAPI families challenged the denial of school access based on Asian ancestry.

The program will highlight Tape v. Hurley, an 1884 California Supreme Court case holding that the exclusion of a Chinese American student from public school because of her ancestry was unlawful, and Gong Lum v. Rice, a 1927 unanimous US Supreme Court decision that applied the “separate but equal” doctrine from Plessy v. Ferguson to allow states to classify students of Chinese descent as “colored” and assign them to separate schools.

White & Case colleagues will participate as actors and the production team. The post-reenactment discussion will feature Professor Mae Ngai, the Lung Family Professor Emerita of Asian American Studies at Columbia University.

AABANY members are invited to register by clicking here. This event grants 1.5 hours of CLE in Diversity, Inclusion and Elimination of Bias.