Over our 20 years of operation, we at MLFA have funded an increasing number of seminal cases that have established many important precedents for equal rights. We have helped prisoners and those
experiencing discrimination in the workplace. We’ve worked with clients as they attempt to establish legal immigration status. And we’ve represented a number of important nonprofit organizations.
It’s clear that our work has had a significant impact on the civil rights landscape of the country in the past two decades. It’s also evident that we wouldn’t be where we are today if we hadn’t worked so hard to fund legal representation for a number of clients during the more contentious early years of the post 9/11 period.
But most importantly, MLFA’s significant growth in scope and reach has happened because we’ve been willing to evolve. We recognized quite early on that the funding only approach was limiting—that if we were to really make the kind of sweeping changes needed to protect people’s rights we would need to think bigger. So we did. In 2014, we funded a new, strategically focused, specialized law center: the Constitutional Law
Center for Muslims in America (CLCMA).
The MLFA/CLCMA model quickly allowed us to fund more cases more efficiently, bringing quality legal defense to cases that establish case law and set precedents that have historic impact for all who are wrongly accused.
