Civil Rights Clinic Wins Attorney's Fees in Religious Freedom Case

On September 9, 2008, the UC Davis Civil Rights Clinic was awarded more than $46,000 in attorney's fees in the case of Kimbrough v. State of California, in which the clinic assisted an inmate challenging prison grooming standards under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA). The RLUIPA is a federal statute enacted to provide greater protection of religious freedom in the areas of land-use and prisons.

The UC Davis Civil Rights Clinic involves second- and third-year law students in the representation of indigent clients in civil rights cases in state and federal trial and appellate courts. In the course of representing Mr. Kimbrough, law students conducted a full-day evidentiary hearing that included expert testimony, wrote a brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and filed and argued the motion for attorney's fees. Students Joseph Chun '05, Joseph Angelo DeSantis '08, Meghan Haswell '08, Emelyn Rodriguez '04, and Sean Strauss '06 worked on the case under the supervision of Professor Carter C. White.