Just weeks before Annette Hubbell was set to perform an excerpt from her one-woman play—Women Warriors—at the Rancho Santa Fe branch of the San Diego County Library, she was blindsided by a last-minute objection from the branch manager.   

Instead of showcasing the lives of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman, and Mary McLeod Bethune—as the manager had originally requested—Annette was told that she needed to replace Tubman and Bethune with white historical figures. According to the manager, library administrators “were uncomfortable with [Annette] performing a black character as a white woman.” 

Exasperated by the library’s demands and explicitly race-based justifications, Annette refused to change her performance, and as a result, the library canceled her show entirely. Now, Annette’s fighting back with a federal lawsuit and we’re proud to have taken on her case.

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The Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law means the government cannot reward or disadvantage individuals based on their race. That guarantee precludes reparations proposals that seek to compensate black Americans for the injustice of slavery.  

Since California has been especially determined to implement reparations-related legislation, we’ve been speaking out in opposition—and we’ve received some interesting pushback as a result. PLF attorney Andrew Quinio responds to a particularly bizarre “cease and desist” letter he received—threatening to sue both him and PLF for our alleged “unconstitutional lobbying.”

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On April 14, PLF attorneys filed a federal lawsuit challenging a new rule under the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) that forces title companies—like East Texas Title Companies, owned by PLF clients Celia Flowers and her daughter Erica Hallmark—to collect and report sensitive personal information about their customers or face potentially ruinous fines and even criminal charges.  

Last week, Forbes covered Celia and Erica’s fight—offering an in-depth look into FinCEN’s reporting requirements and the penalties for breaking the rules, even accidentally.

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PLF senior attorney Erin Wilcox was recently quoted in Houston Public Media discussing Jerry and Theresa Thompson’s fight for equality in public contracting.  

The Thompsons have spent the past 30 years growing their business—Landscape Consultants of Texas—into the success it is today. But due to discriminatory policies championed by local government organizations—like Houston’s Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) program—they face significant disadvantages whenever they try to compete for a public contract.  

As Erin explains, the MBE program is “basically trying to fix discrimination with more discrimination, and we all know that never works.”

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