{"id":13417,"date":"2025-03-12T09:33:14","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T13:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/?page_id=13417"},"modified":"2026-10-23T10:54:57","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T14:54:57","slug":"forum","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/forum\/","title":{"rendered":"Forum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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What is the CR-CL <\/em>Forum<\/em>?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The CR\u2013CL Forum<\/em> is the online counterpart to the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review<\/em>. In 2026, the Forum<\/em> was launched to platform progressive, radical, and revolutionary legal commentary and scholarship and to respond to contemporary legal topics and issues in an accessible, expansive, and timely manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For the CR-CL Blog<\/em>, the short-form counterpart to the Forum<\/em>, click here!<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Volume 6<\/strong>2<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Playing the Purcell <\/em>Game<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

By: John Deschler<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decided by the Supreme Court in 2006, <\/em>Purcell v. Gonzalez has given defendant jurisdictions a tool to delay court-ordered redistricting on the ground that they came too close to an election. This article catalogues the drastic expansion of <\/em>Purcell over the last two decades, culminating in the Court\u2019s <\/em>Allen v. Milligan order following the landmark decision altering the Voting Rights Act in <\/em>Louisiana v. Callais. This article argues that the <\/em>Milligan order, which limited the invocation of <\/em>Purcell to government actors, conflicts with courts\u2019 practice of expanding <\/em>Purcell\u2019s temporal reach through the rights of individual parties. Finally, the article proposes a strategy for voting rights litigants to blunt <\/em>Purcell\u2019s remedy-delaying effect: litigate <\/em>Purcell deadlines before the merits, rather than after a remedy has been ordered. <\/em>Purcell remains a major part of the procedural landscape in which redistricting cases are litigated, and litigants must learn to use that landscape to their advantage.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vol. 62 | No. 1 | August 2026<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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More Than a Tent: Using the Uniform Unincorporated Nonprofit Association Act to Protect Encampment Residents\u2019 Rights<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

By: Michelle Y. Ewert<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Homeless encampments have become increasingly vulnerable to criminalization, eviction, and forced displacement in the wake of <\/em><\/em>City of Grants Pass v. Johnson and renewed federal and local hostility toward unsheltered people. Courts often treat encampments as temporary locations rather than as communities, leaving residents without effective legal protection when individual plaintiffs lose standing due to displacement, death, or relocation. This article challenges that narrow conception by arguing that many encampments function as collective entities that provide safety, stability, shared resources, and political voice for people without housing. Drawing on constitutional theory, property scholarship, and case studies of organized encampments, the article demonstrates how encampments can constitute \u201chome\u201d with community equity deserving of legal recognition and procedural protection.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article then proposes a novel and pragmatic solution to persistent standing and enforcement problems: treating qualifying encampments as unincorporated nonprofit associations under the Uniform Unincorporated Nonprofit Association Act (UUNAA) and analogous state statutes. Unlike corporations or formal nonprofits, the UUNAA offers a flexible legal structure well suited to loosely organized, noncommercial groups. Recognition as an unincorporated nonprofit association would allow encampments to sue in their own name, preserve claims despite changes in membership, and assert collective rights alongside those of individual residents. The article concludes by offering guidance for lawyers and organizers working with encampments to pursue resident-led legal recognition without undermining autonomy or dignity, and argues that recognizing encampments as collective legal actors can meaningfully enhance due process,<\/em> stability, and political power for some of society\u2019s most marginalized communities.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vol. 62 | No. 1 | August 2026<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Self-Misgendering Mandates and the First Amendment Official Duty Doctrine<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

By: Brendan M. Conner<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across the federal government and a growing number of states, public employers are directing transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming employees to misgender themselves. Executive orders declaring a binary conception of sex to be federal policy have hardened into operational commands as agencies purge pronoun features from email platforms and personnel systems, while states have barred educators from sharing self-identifying pronouns in the classroom and stripped pronouns from public employees’ email signature blocks. Although the First Amendment implications of rules governing how public employees address others are well represented in the scholarly literature, mandates compelling employees to misgender themselves have received comparatively little attention. The gap is consequential. In <\/em>Wood v. Florida Department of Education, the Eleventh Circuit held that a transgender teacher’s use of her own preferred title and pronouns in the classroom was speech “pursuant to” her official duties under <\/em>Garcetti v. Ceballos and therefore categorically excluded from First Amendment protection.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Article argues that <\/em>Wood‘s formalist reasoning cannot be squared with <\/em>Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which requires a practical, context-sensitive inquiry into whether speech owes its existence to a public employee’s job duties. Drawing on post-<\/em>Garcetti precedent, linguistic scholarship on the identity-expressive function of pronoun self-designation, and emerging critiques of government-speech capture, the Article demonstrates that self-identification is not a task the government hires any employee to perform. It is instead a foundational act of personal identity expression that public employees carry with them into the workplace as private citizens. The Article then develops a doctrinal framework distinguishing addressee-oriented pronoun rules from self-misgendering mandates and shows why the latter constitute citizen speech subject to public-concern analysis and <\/em>Pickering balancing rather than categorical exclusion under the official duty doctrine.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vol. 62 | No. 1 | August 2026<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Volume 61<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Special Edition: 60th Anniversary Symposium<\/a><\/mark><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Law’s Two Moralities<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

By: Cass R. Sunstein<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was designed to ensure fair wages and put an end to exploitative labor conditions. Despite recent reconsideration of the FLSA as it applies to incarcerated workers, courts continue to reject the idea that they fall within the Act\u2019s purposes. This Note seeks to understand why courts maintain this exclusion\u2014particularly when they have begun to reconsider other aspects of FLSA coverage for incarcerated labor.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To answer this question, this Note presents the dependency framework\u2014a legal rationale that assumes incarcerated workers are fully dependent on prisons and, therefore, have no needs beyond those provided for by prisons. Ultimately, this Note argues that this framework has its roots in slavery, and that is why courts continue to misinterpret the purposes of the FLSA to exclude incarcerated workers.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make this argument, the Note begins by showing how, even in the generous holding of <\/em>Scott v. Baltimore County, the Fourth Circuit perpetuated the dependency framework and denied that incarcerated workers fall within the FLSA\u2019s purpose due to impacts on their well-being. It then takes a step back and examines the origins of the dependency framework, tracing its foundations to 1990s case law. From there, the Note shows how the framework and courts are out of touch with reality, highlighting how incarcerated workers have unmet needs and fall within the original purposes of the FLSA. Finally, the Note situates the dependency framework within the broader historical context of slavery and post-Reconstruction convict leasing, revealing how modern prison labor practices remain tethered to America\u2019s legacy of racial and economic exploitation.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vol. 61 | No. 3 | September 2026<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recommended Citation<\/strong>: Cass R. Sunstein, Law’s Two Moralities<\/em>, 61 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. F. 42\u201350 (2026).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cruelty, Chaos, and Caprice: Immigration Enforcement and Law in the Wake of Trump<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

By: Daniel Kanstroom<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An unprecedented array of recent government initiatives seems designed to deter even the most<\/em> desperate unauthorized entries, to amplify a sense of precarity among noncitizens and<\/em> naturalized citizens within the US, to promote massive \u201cself-deportation,\u201d and to exacerbate<\/em> racial and ethnic tensions. By situating this episode historically within the frameworks of law<\/em> and politics we may begin to envision ways forward. To be sure, immigration enforcement law<\/em> has long been deeply problematic. But without an understanding of how the system has<\/em> deteriorated, proposals for more general \u201ccomprehensive immigration reform\u201d will remain not only politically elusive, but normatively barren and legally illegitimate for the millions<\/em> among us who are not U.S. citizens, and indeed for many who are. This essay suggests focusing<\/em> on three distinct, but interlocking features: cruelty, chaos, and caprice. None are new. But,<\/em> taken together, they are much worse now than ever before. These attributes capture the<\/em> essential aspects of the current enforcement episode while also pointing toward necessary legal<\/em> reform once the tide turns, which, if history and polls are guides, it likely will\u2014at least to a<\/em> degree.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vol. 61 | No. 4 | September 2026<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recommended Citation<\/strong>: Daniel Kanstroom, Cruelty, Chaos, and Caprice: Immigration Enforcement and Law in the Wake of Trump<\/em>, 61 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. F. 51\u201369 (2026).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Prairieland Prosecutions and Trump’s War on Terror<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

By: Zohra Ahmed<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Almost by definition, non-citizens are the first to suffer in the emergencies that nation states have become prone to declare. For this reason and others, immigration law has never been a neutral rubric for administering the toll at the border, but rather a flexible regime to manage overdetermined anxieties, real and manufactured. The state has agitated and directed a potent combination of psychic and political fears towards the figure of the alien outsider\u2014their convenient cathexis. But citizens are neither immune from immigration enforcement nor shielded from nativist panics. For example, when citizens have clearly discerned the border\u2019s purpose and actively refused to abide by the state\u2019s enmities, they have sometimes faced criminal charges for their solidarity with non-citizens.

At various moments, the state has leveled serious criminal charges against people who dared to disturb the border regime and extend their care beyond the fortress of citizenship. In the 1980s, Sanctuary Movement participants physically shielded non-citizens from removal and were subsequently charged and convicted of smuggling. In the 2010s, No More Deaths fed those braving the harsh Sonoran Desert in search of refuge. The Department of Justice leveled charges against No More Deaths participants, but juries acquitted them. The prosecution of migrant justice activists reveals the sometimes symbiotic relationship between criminal and immigration enforcement.

The Prairieland<\/em> case brings this trend forward to 2026. The Department of Justice (DOJ) successfully prosecuted fourteen activists for their protest outside of an ICE detention center during which a police officer suffered and survived a gunshot to his neck. With these prosecutions, convictions and long sentences, ranging between 30 and 100 years, the DOJ is sending a message: when protests organized by those who oppose the border regime turn violent, anyone even remotely involved will pay the price. The Trump administration is recalibrating the risks for migrant justice activists, and left-leaning political networks more broadly, drawing on techniques perfected on other groups, like gangs, Islamists and rightwing militias that make it possible to impute guilt by association.\" <\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Vol. 61 | No. 5 | October 2026<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recommended Citation<\/strong>: Zohra Ahmed, The Prairieland Prosecutions and Trump’s War on Terror<\/em>, 61 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. F. 70\u201377 (2026).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Birthright Citizenship and Suspension of Deportation<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
By: Gerald L. Neuman<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
In January 2025, Donald Trump issued an Executive Order that claimed authority to abolish birthright citizenship for children of unlawfully present or temporarily present parents. That novel arrogation of power violated both the Constitution\u2014as the Supreme Court held in June 2026\u2014and also the legislation enacted by Congress on U.S. citizenship. The large literature on birthright citizenship has analyzed the issue primarily from the constitutional perspective, as did the opinions in the Supreme Court case.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This article examines that statutory issue, especially through the lens of one highly revealing aspect of the twentieth-century evidence. The law and practice of suspension of deportation for noncitizen parents of children born as citizens while their parents were unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States documents repeated confirmation of the shared interpretation of Congress and the Executive Branch on the scope of birthright citizenship, as embodied in the 1940 Nationality Act and then the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The President has no authority to violate that statutory guarantee.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vol. 61 | No. 6 | October 2026<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recommended Citation<\/strong>: Gerald L. Neuman, Birthright Citizenship and Suspension of Deportation<\/em>, 61 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. F. 78\u2013103 (2026).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Inaugural Edition: Student Voices<\/mark><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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From Slavery to Dependency: How Courts Misinterpret the Fair Labor Standards Act to Justify Prison Labor<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
By: Nicole Plante<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was designed to ensure fair wages and put an end to exploitative labor conditions. Despite recent reconsideration of the FLSA as it applies to incarcerated workers, courts continue to reject the idea that they fall within the Act\u2019s purposes. This Note seeks to understand why courts maintain this exclusion\u2014particularly when they have begun to reconsider other aspects of FLSA coverage for incarcerated labor.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
To answer this question, this Note presents the dependency framework\u2014a legal rationale that assumes incarcerated workers are fully dependent on prisons and, therefore, have no needs beyond those provided for by prisons. Ultimately, this Note argues that this framework has its roots in slavery, and that is why courts continue to misinterpret the purposes of the FLSA to exclude incarcerated workers.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
To make this argument, the Note begins by showing how, even in the generous holding of <\/em>Scott v. Baltimore County, the Fourth Circuit perpetuated the dependency framework and denied that incarcerated workers fall within the FLSA\u2019s purpose due to impacts on their well-being. It then takes a step back and examines the origins of the dependency framework, tracing its foundations to 1990s case law. From there, the Note shows how the framework and courts are out of touch with reality, highlighting how incarcerated workers have unmet needs and fall within the original purposes of the FLSA. Finally, the Note situates the dependency framework within the broader historical context of slavery and post-Reconstruction convict leasing, revealing how modern prison labor practices remain tethered to America\u2019s legacy of racial and economic exploitation.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vol. 61 | No. 1 | June 2026<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recommended Citation<\/strong>: Nicole Plante, From Slavery to Dependency: How Courts Misinterpret the Fair Labor Standards Act to Justify Prison Labor<\/em>, 61 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. F. 1\u201321 (2026).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic<\/em>: Spending Clause Legislation and the End of Thiboutot<\/em><\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
By: Ariel Vasser<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since 1980, the Supreme Court has held that 42 U.S.C. \u00a7 1983 is available to redress violations of all federal laws. However, in June 2025, the Court decided <\/em>Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, severely curtailing litigants\u2019 ability to use Section 1983 as a vehicle for vindicating violations of federal \u201cspending-power\u201d statutes. This decision departed from the Court\u2019s most recent precedent in <\/em>Health & Hospital Corp. of Marion County v. Talevski, which was decided only two years prior. This Comment analyzes <\/em>Medina and argues that it is both an incorrect and misleading application of precedent and that its core distinction between Spending and non-Spending Clause statutes is analytically unsound. In doing so, it argues for the first time that <\/em>Medina has impliedly overruled <\/em>Maine v. Thiboutot\u2019s application to spending-power statutes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
By analyzing the Court\u2019s Section 1983 \u201cand laws\u201d jurisprudence, beginning in the 1980s and ending in 2025 with <\/em>Medina, this Comment explains how and why <\/em>Medina is different and has shifted the landscape. The new aspects of its test\u2014which use the language at issue in <\/em>Talevski as a talisman and rely on doctrinally unclear distinctions between Spending and non-Spending Clause statutes\u2014are unprecedented and will drastically impact litigants across the country. <\/em>Medina\u2019s scope can be best understood by its effect on previously enforceable provisions of \u201cspending-power\u201d statutes, particularly under the Medicaid Act. Using two illustrative provisions as examples, this Comment analyzes how <\/em>Medina has effectively rendered these provisions dead letters and restricted individuals\u2019 abilities to sue to enforce their rights.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vol. 61  |  No. 2  |  June 2026<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recommended Citation<\/strong>: Ariel Vasser, Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic: Spending Clause Legislation and the End of <\/em>Thiboutot, 61 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. F. 22\u201341 (2026).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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