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Family Violence Appellate Project

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Announcements

Request for Proposal: Web Designer/Developer for Legal Resource Library

June 3, 2022 by FVAP

Summary of Request

Family Violence Appellate Project (“FVAP”) seeks to transform its website into a comprehensive, user-friendly Legal Resource Library (“Project”) for attorneys, advocates, and survivors of domestic violence and gender-based abuse. The database will consist of model briefs, motions and pleading templates, toolkits and tip sheets, legal resources, social science research, and trainings developed by FVAP. FVAP seeks proposals from vendors to build and develop this Legal Resource Library on FVAP’s existing WordPress website platform.

Organizational Introduction:

FVAP is a California and Washington state non-profit legal organization whose mission is to ensure the safety and well-being of survivors of domestic violence and other forms of intimate partner, family, and gender-based abuse by helping them obtain effective appellate representation. FVAP provides legal assistance to survivors of abuse at the appellate level through direct representation, collaborating with pro bono attorneys, advocating for survivors on important legal issues, and offering training and legal support for legal services providers and domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking counselors. FVAP is the California State Bar-funded Support Center with expertise in domestic violence law, family law, and appellate procedure.

By centering our work on the most marginalized survivors, including rural, immigrant, Native American, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA+ communities, FVAP works to transform the power of the civil legal system to support all survivors of abuse. A significant part of this work is ensuring survivors, especially those experiencing multiple oppressions, and the people who support them, have access to the legal information, resources and remedies they need to achieve justice.

History of FVAP’s website and Legal Resource Library:

FVAP was founded in 2012, and launched its website (www.fvaplaw.org) that year.  The Legal Resource Library was launched in approximately 2016.  FVAP’s website and Legal Resource Library is hosted on WordPress.

In 2021, the California Access to Justice Commission (“CA ATJ”) announced an RFP for the Legal Aid Infrastructure & Innovation Grants. FVAP applied to upgrade its Legal Resource Library, and was selected as a grantee in early 2022. This project is being funded by the CA ATJ grant.

Project Overview and Purpose:

The Need:
FVAP relies extensively on thousands of documents (including social science and law review articles, legal briefs, case law,  research memos, referral resources and sample motions) both for impact appellate litigation and to provide technical assistance and written resources to attorneys, advocates, and self-represented litigants. Currently, FVAP has numerous independent systems for storing these resources, creating significant barriers to accessing and maintaining the resources. Additionally, only a small portion of these legal resource documents are available to attorneys, advocates, and self-represented litigants on FVAP’s website. FVAP has not had the capacity to further develop and maintain a comprehensive Legal Resource Library for the public. As an example, FVAP has over 7,000 files containing social science and legal research information that is not currently available on its website. Furthermore, survey responses have shown that individuals searching FVAP’s website for resources find it “cumbersome” and difficult to locate materials. Access to these resources is critical for attorneys, advocates, and self-represented litigants.

Goals and Outcomes:
An easy-to-use, highly effective, up-to-date resource library will significantly increase access to self-help materials, advocate resources, sample briefs and other legal resources, and social science and law review articles targeted to the appropriate audience. The external outcomes will be: 

  1. Self-represented DV survivors in California and Washington will have better access to legal information and resources to help them with their cases (estimated 200,000+ people/year)
  2. DV advocates in California and Washington will have better access to legal information and resources to help their survivor clients
  3. Legal aid attorneys in California and Washington will have better access to sample briefs, research, and social science to help survivors in trial court
  4. Legal aid attorneys nationwide will have better access to DV social science research and materials, as well as sample amicus briefs, to help survivors in trial or appellate courts
This technology-based infrastructure project will make a long-term impact on FVAP’s capacity to organize, maintain, and locate its legal resources because it will centralize and store all materials in the Legal Resource Library. This new streamlined system will significantly increase access to these important materials, while simultaneously decreasing FVAP attorney time needed to maintain these materials. This will also increase FVAP attorney effectiveness in responding to technical assistance requests and strengthen responses to legal aid and pro bono attorneys.
 
Usage of the Legal Resource Library will be tracked, and contemporaneous surveys will demonstrate the effectiveness of the interface tool and the resources provided. By quickly sending automated text- or email-based surveys to those who access materials, FVAP will have timely feedback on how to make materials more helpful and to determine what additional materials are needed.
View Full RFP Here

Victory for Survivors in Custody Cases with DV

April 27, 2022 by FVAP

In this case, our client, Mother, got a domestic violence restraining order against Father after he physically abused her and refused to return their young son to her, requiring law enforcement to get involved.  The family court gave Mother sole legal and physical custody, but left in place a visitation schedule giving Father three days a week and Mother four.  Since this basically gave Father joint custody of the child for about 43% of the time, the family court was first supposed to see if Father had overcome the presumption against granting him custody, under Family Code section 3044, by analyzing the law’s seven factors in writing or on the record.  Since the family court did not do that, the appellate court reversed the visitation order, and sent the case back to the family court to follow the law.  In addition, the appellate court said the family court didn’t follow the law by refusing to give a “statement of decision,” which Mother had requested at trial, under Family Code section 3022.3.  This is the first published opinion under Family Code section 3022.3.

Read the opinion.

Monica Katz LaBoskey

March 18, 2022 by FVAP

Deputy Director

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Monica Katz LaBoskey is the Deputy Director of Family Violence Appellate Project. Before joining FVAP, Monica was the Managing Attorney – East Bay of Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach. In addition to her management duties at APILO, she represented survivors of domestic violence in Family Court and received her California Domestic Violence Counselor certification through Asian Women’s Shelter. Prior to that, Monica spent more than ten years in private practice, litigating cases in state and federal courts.

Monica is actively involved in the community and serves on the Board of Directors of Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir. She volunteers with her alma maters. She completed Bachelors of Arts in African and African American Studies, Italian Studies, and Politics at Brandeis University; received her Juris Doctor from Northeastern University School of Law; and, holds a Certificate in Nonprofit Executive Leadership from IUPUI Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

September 2023

We are pleased to announce that Monica has been selected to participate in OneJustice’s Executive Fellowship program. The program delivers graduate-level nonprofit management content through an intensive multi-modal peer-based model. We are excited for Monica to build on her passion for organizational stability and infrastructure and apply her learnings to help FVAP succeed through its second decade and beyond.

Victory for Survivors Seeking Restraining Order Renewals

February 2, 2022 by FVAP

FVAP successfully obtained publication of a new case! In this case, the survivor requested to renew a restraining order against her former husband but the trial court denied the request. The survivor appealed the denial and the Court of Appeal reversed the denial because the trial court made an error by only considering whether the former husband committed acts of domestic violence during a narrow window of time when the original restraining order was in effect, and not whether the survivor had a reasonable fear of future abuse. The case has been sent back to the trial court for them to properly apply the law.

Read the opinion.

Oral Argument Today on Dangerous Child Custody Decision

January 26, 2022 by FVAP

Today at 1:30pm, FVAP’s pro bono co-counsel from Wilmer Hale, Thomas Sprankling, will be arguing before the First District Court of Appeal, Division Two, where we, along with Bay Area Legal Aid, are representing a survivor of abuse appealing a dangerous child custody order.
In this case, after giving the survivor a three-year domestic violence restraining order and sole legal and physical custody, the trial court effectively granted the abusive parent joint physical custody by basically ordering 50/50 visitation, without applying the law presuming that is bad for children, found in Family Code section 3044.  The trial court also failed to issue a statement of decision upon the request of the survivor’s attorney, despite Family Code section 3022.3.

 

We hope that today’s outcome will land in favor of the survivor.

Featured Legal Victory on Unjust Mutual Restraining Orders

December 10, 2021 by FVAP

Abusers often seek restraining orders to further abuse or control survivors. When the trial court is deciding mutual requests for restraining orders, they cannot enter mutual restraining orders without first deciding that both parties are primary aggressors within the relationship, and that neither of them were acting in self-defense. The reason for this rule is that mutual domestic violence is very rare, and wrongful mutual restraining orders put the real victim of abuse at risk.

In FVAP’s K.L v. R.H. case, the Court of Appeal explained that the trial court made an error by considering the parties’ allegations separately. Instead, the trial court should weigh the acts of the parties against each other to decide which person was the most significant aggressor in the relationship, and whether either of them acted in self defense. In considering the case this way, the Court of Appeal rightly ruled that the opposing party was the most significant aggressor, and only he should have been restrained.

The trial court also made an error by relying on the survivor’s previous criminal conviction to issue a mutual restraining order against her because it was irrelevant since it did not relate to domestic violence or other serious violence. Particularly for Black women, like the survivor in this case, overpolicing and racial stereotypes result in criminal convictions. The limitations on what kinds of convictions can be used in domestic violence restraining order cases ensures that this racial bias doesn’t also result in wrongful mutual restraining orders.

FVAP litigated this case in collaboration with pro-bono co-counsel, Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, UCI School of Law Domestic Violence Clinic, and Legal Aid SoCal. The Court of Appeal then granted our request for publication.

2021 Legislative Advocacy Wrap-Up

November 17, 2021 by FVAP

In addition to advocating for survivors in court, FVAP works with local, state, and federal policymakers to ensure the statutes, rules, and regulations used in court have survivors’ best interests at the forefront. It was a busy year for us working on such advocacy efforts. In California, at the local level we worked with survivor support agencies to ensure their county government officials follow laws regarding confidentiality and mandated reporting. And nationally, FVAP lobbied and signed onto multiple letters urging policymakers to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), establish an official awareness day for missing and murdered Native women and girls, improve the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act, and close loopholes in the Victims of Crime Act. So far, federal actions have occurred on the Victims of Crime Act.

At the state level in California, FVAP has staff who serve on the Judicial Council Family and Juvenile Law Advisory Committee and on the California Lawyers Association Appellate Courts Committee.  FVAP has also worked to ensure sufficient funding in the budget for items such as increasing the Equal Access Fund, ensuring court reports for trial court hearings, providing for ongoing sexual and domestic violence prevention programs, and allowing more workers to take paid sick leave.  In addition, FVAP has provided comments to the Judicial Council on changes to their domestic violence restraining order and other court forms, amendments to court rules on preventing bias in court interactions, and guidelines for video remote interpreting.

Perhaps FVAP has been most active in working on state legislation in California.  On the housing side, of the bills that are now law, FVAP submitted letters in support of AB 832 to protect tenants impacted by COVID-19, and AB 838 to ensure more equity in local inspections of habitability.  Regarding domestic violence restraining orders, FVAP supported AB 1057 to clarify what is a firearm, SB 24 to restrict abusers’ access to children’s school, medical, or work information, SB 320 to clarify trial court procedure for ensuring restrained parties have turned over their firearms, SB 374 to clarify that coercive control (a form of disturbing the peace, which is a type of abuse) includes reproductive coercion, and SB 538 to allow restraining orders to be filed electronically and parties to appear remotely.  FVAP also supported AB 262 to ease the process for clearing criminal records for human trafficking survivors, SB 498 to expand eligibility for accessing services funded by the Interest On Lawyers’ Trust Accounts (IOLTA), and SB 654 to better protect children when testifying and when they are ordered to unsupervised visitation with an alleged abuser.

Some of the California bills FVAP has worked are now “two-year bills,” meaning they were not passed or dropped this year but will be continued to be worked on next year.  These include AB 854 to temporarily stop Ellis Act evictions, AB 1493 to better protect against evictions of survivors, SB 373 to add debt protections for survivors, SB 537 to improve the child welfare system’s response to domestic violence, and SB 774 to provide for attorney-client privilege for complaints to the Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH).

Finally, FVAP’s new Washington office has been active in that state.  For instance, FVAP provided input on HB 1320, which significantly amended statutes relating to all of the civil protective orders.  And FVAP’s Washington staff are heavily involved in multiple workgroups to implement this legislation and to ensure gender equity in family court.

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