Today we’re doing our annual Recent CA Family Law Appellate Cases training for members of California Partnership to End Domestic Violence. Stay tuned for a recording of this training, which will be accessible through our Legal Resource Library in the coming weeks!
Announcements
FVAP joins legal services community to work with CA Dept. of Real Estate to publish DV-informed guide on tenants’ and landlords’ rights and responsibilities
In collaboration with other legal services providers and the California Department of Real Estate, we had the opportunity to contribute to the newly released guide on residential tenants’ and landlords’ rights and responsibilities. Our work focused on including the legal rights and responsibilities of survivors and landlords as they relate to survivors obtaining and maintaining safe housing.
Unfortunately, survivors of domestic violence face discrimination by landlords because landlords are not always informed of the special housing rights that survivors have in order to stay safe. We hope that this updated guide will curb the discrimination we have been seeing.
New Report on Convening of CA Domestic Violence Service Providers
In collaboration with the Los Angeles Center for Law & Justice (LACLJ), last June we facilitated two working sessions with domestic violence service providers in California to determine the impact of changes made to domestic violence laws in the past five years and to identify areas of improvement to focus on in the future. We were glad to find improvements in court outcomes, for example, but there are still key areas that make getting justice harder for survivors, such as a need for better language access and judicial education on domestic violence issues.
Read the report to learn more: Pathways Pre-conference Report 2019
Legal Victory for Indigenous Women in Oklahoma
Domestic Violence Advocates supporting Indigenous Women in the U.S. celebrated last Friday, as the United States Supreme Court upheld expansive tribal court jurisdiction in Sharp v. Murphy, in which FVAP joined an amicus brief filed by National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. This decision enables the Creek Nation in Oklahoma to prosecute non-Indians for domestic violence and other serious crimes committed on the vast majority of their tribal territory. This is a huge victory since current rates of violence against Indigenous women constitute a crisis.
String of Requests for Publication Granted to Benefit Survivors!
We’re excited to share about a string of legal victories for survivors of domestic violence. We successfully obtained publication of 3 cases that will benefit domestic violence survivors in court. Issues covered in these cases include move out orders as part of restraining orders, overcoming the presumption that foster care is in the best interest of a child, and justifications for a restraining order because of coercive and controlling behavior.
Read the opinions via the links above, or you can read FVAP’s description of these cases in the Cases You Can Use section of our website.
FVAP Article Opposing Problematic Coercive Control Bill Published in the Daily Journal
We’re excited to announce “‘Coercive control’ domestic violence bill: well-intentioned, but need to be reworked” written by FVAP’s Legal Director, Nancy K.D. Lemon, and FVAP Staff Attorney, Cory Hernandez, advocating that Senate Bill 1141 not be passed was published in the Daily Journal yesterday. Unfortunately, the Bill introduces new barriers that will make it harder for many survivors to protect themselves. Our hope is that the Bill does not become law unless it is substantially amended to address its current issues.
FVAP Article on Secretly Recorded Evidence Gets Published
The California Association of Certified Family Law Specialists just published an article written by FVAP Senior Managing Attorney, Shuray Ghorishi, and the Honorable Judge Mark Juhas in their journal! The article, California Penal Code 632: The Dilemma of Secretly Recorded Evidence in Family Law and Abuse Cases, explores the nuances of recorded communications in family court cases, including when a recording can and cannot be introduced into evidence.
