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Local Action with a Long Reach

The San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project has set a new standard for how students can impact local law
Dean Heather K. Gerken chatting with students in The Courtyard
The San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project (SFALP) clinic was born out of a reading group led by Dean Heather K. Gerken.

A lucky chance at law school changed everything for Kaitlin Caruso ’10.

At the beginning of her 1L year, Caruso didn’t yet feel at home at Yale Law School. “My courses felt really theoretical, and I felt like I was flailing a little bit,” she said. 

When a friend learned of Caruso’s interest in reproductive justice, she invited her to a unique new reading group led by Dean and Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law Heather K. Gerken. “A few weeks into law school, I found myself sitting on Heather Gerken’s living room floor with a few other students, talking to then-San Francisco Deputy City Attorney Kathleen Morris about reproductive rights,” said Caruso.

Before long, the reading group had evolved into a full-fledged clinic, the San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project (SFALP), that paired Yale Law students with attorneys in the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office to conceive, develop, and litigate public-interest cases, often with national significance. 

Over the years, SFALP students have worked on many high-profile cases, including the historic Proposition 8 case legalizing same-sex marriage in California; the City Attorney’s successful challenge to a 2017 Executive Order threatening to withhold funding from sanctuary cities; and cases related to consumer protection, including affordable housing and firearm safety.

The clinic offers students experience litigating local matters that, often, have national impact. And it shines a light on the opportunities available at the state and local level as the federal landscape shifts. 

“It’s been a source of enormous joy to watch so many students in the clinic go on to pursue careers in government service, especially at the state and local level,” said Gerken. “SFALP gave them a chance to do pathbreaking work. For many students, that experience changed their career trajectories, and they in turn have changed their communities for the better.”

During her first two years with the clinic, Caruso helped the City Attorney’s Office investigate entities interfering with women’s ability to access abortion services in California. The project resulted in lasting regulation of crisis pregnancy centers. “It was a two-year-long chess game of strategizing how to figure out what information was available and how to present it. I can’t imagine having a better introduction to investigation and litigation than that,” she said.

Through her 2L and 3L years, Caruso also helped with the Proposition 8 litigation as the case traveled through the Ninth Circuit and on to the Supreme Court.

“SFALP grounded me and helped me see that there was real value and utility in what I was learning. It wasn’t free floating rules of civil procedure. It helped anchor this experience that sometimes felt like drinking from a firehose of heavily theoretical study and kept me engaged. That really mattered to me,” said Caruso.

After law school, Caruso worked in consumer protection litigation in Chicago and New York City. She eventually became acting director for the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs. She now teaches local government law with an emphasis on consumer protection at the University of Maine School of Law. 

Every stage of her professional journey was influenced by her experience in the clinic, said Caruso. “SFALP caught fire in my imagination and drove everything from there,” she said.

Vindicating state law

SFALP students at work
Emma Sokoloff-Rubin ’18, Melissa Fich ’21, Shannon Manley ’20, and Duncan Hosie ’21.

Jill Habig ’09 is the founder and CEO of the Public Rights Project, a civil rights nonprofit that works with local, state, and tribal governments on issues like fair elections, reproductive justice, and workers’ rights. 

When Habig entered Yale Law School, most of the other highly ranked law schools did not have local government classes. “They focused mostly on the federal courts, the federal constitution, and federal government service as a career path and overlooked state and local government,” she said.

SFALP has challenged that norm. “I think what it’s done in part is set out a pathway and elevated the prestige and importance of state and local government service,” said Habig. “It has helped set a standard that other elite law schools have started to follow.” 

Emma Sokoloff-Rubin ’18 is the director of SFALP. She joined the clinic as a 2L in September of 2016. By January, she said, she was assisting on the sanctuary cities case. “Concepts I had learned in Con Law took on new meaning and urgency as I put them into practice, learning from seasoned government lawyers who were themselves figuring out new and innovative ways to use the power of local government to litigate the most pressing issues of our day,” she said.

Emily Lau ’22, a staff attorney at the State Democracy Research Initiative at Wisconsin Law School, said working in SFALP as a law student illuminated the ways in which working in state and local law can be immensely rewarding.

During her time in the clinic, Lau worked on a successful lawsuit against Uber and Lyft for misclassifying their drivers as independent contractors instead of employees, as well as a groundbreaking climate change lawsuit against the five largest fossil-fuel corporations. The latter lawsuit, filed on behalf of the city of San Francisco, asked the companies to pay for infrastructure necessary to protect the city from the consequences of rising sea levels. “[Working on these cases] really helped me understand the ways in which there are opportunities to vindicate rights under state law in ways that aren’t possible under federal law,” said Lau.

These days, as part of her work with Wisconsin Law School, Lau is helping to create a resource called 50 Constitutions that makes state constitutions more accessible to the public.

Local law can have a dramatic impact on everyday life, Lau said. “If we just think about how the state has police powers and local governments structure and provide basic services such as transportation, schooling, access to water — all these things are handled at the state and local level,” she said. “Or consider, when we think about elections we often think about federal elections, but the state decides how you vote, who gets to vote, and when and where.” 

David Louk ’15 is a deputy on the Complex and Affirmative Litigation team at the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, working on the very team of lawyers who supervised him when he was a student in SFALP. He is one of two clinic alumni who now work full time for the office. The team’s docket is extremely broad, as it handles both affirmative and defensive matters on behalf of the city, county, and state of California, and works with SFALP students to develop new case ideas.

For Louk, too, it’s empowering to work at the local level. “I’m seeing the conditions on the street and what businesses are doing every day as I walk to work, and there’s something really gratifying about being so intimately connected to the place you live and feeling like the work you do has an immediate effect on your community,” he said. 

He notes that local government still offers opportunities that are increasingly unavailable at a larger scale.

“A lot of our work is in state courts rather than federal courts, and there’s possibly more room for creativity and testing the laws in a way to reach progressive outcomes that is unlikely for the foreseeable future at the federal level,” he said.

SFALP caught fire in my imagination and drove everything from there.”

—Kaitlin Caruso ’10

A “powerful network”

sfalp-students-2022.jpg
Dean Heather K. Gerken with SFALP students in 2022

Nearly 20 years after SFALP started as a reading group in Gerken’s living room, many of the clinic’s more than 250 alumni have built careers in state and local government. “These people have become our partners at Public Rights. They’re my ‘kitchen cabinet’ of confidants and thought partners. It’s a pretty powerful network,” said Habig.

Many of the clinic’s alumni return to mentor new generations of SFALP students, joining Gerken and Sokoloff-Rubin as guest lecturers in the clinic seminar and meeting one-on-one with students for office hours.

Louk said the model of mentorship that he learned at Yale Law School is one he continues to apply with junior staff and the students in the clinic. As a student, he was struck by Gerken’s responsiveness and ability to draw out the best in people. “‘What would Heather Gerken do?’ is a nice way to model yourself as a mentor,” said Louk. 

Gerken is one of the few deans in the country to continue teaching a clinic while leading a law school. “As dean, I’ve had to do less teaching than I did as a faculty member. But I couldn’t imagine giving up SFALP. It provides a constant reminder of why I took this job in the first place,” she said.  

Mentorship and community-building are at the heart of SFALP’s approach to clinical teaching and government lawyering. Sokoloff-Rubin said she and Gerken aim to create a seminar environment where students can “think out loud,” bouncing ideas off each other and learning to navigate both big-picture strategic decisions and thorny legal research questions alongside their peers. 

“We want students to leave our clinic with the ability to think expansively about what they can accomplish through law, and to understand the essential role state and local governments can play in protecting the rights of marginalized communities,” said Sokoloff-Rubin. “I feel incredibly grateful to be part of this clinic community and to know that law school is just the start,” she added. 

Wherever they end up, SFALP graduates know first-hand that local action can have a long reach.

“It bears saying that it’s very important to be working to do good, and making a difference, at every level of government,” said Louk.

It bears saying that it’s very important to be working to do good, and making a difference, at every level of government.”

—David Louk ’15