Blog of Rights
Sandra S.
Park

Sandra Park is a staff attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. She previously worked at the Legal Aid Society, Bronx Neighborhood Office, first as a Skadden Fellow and then as a staff attorney. She also clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in the Southern District of New York. A magna cum laude graduate of New York University School of Law and Harvard University, Park has also worked as a research associate at the Brennan Center for Justice.

06/13/2011

Flores-Villar: Supreme Court Allows Law that Discriminates Against Fathers to Stand, For Now

By Sandra S. Park, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 4:44pm

Today, an evenly split Supreme Court allowed a nationality law that makes it more difficult for fathers to transmit U.S. citizenship to their children than mothers. The order in Flores-Villar v. United States was 4-4 (Justice Elena Kagan recused herself due to her participation in the case as Solicitor General), and has limited precedential value. The Court did not tackle the central issue of whether the law — one of the few that explicitly discriminates based on gender — is constitutional. The ACLU filed an amicus brief arguing that the law could not survive.

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11/22/2011
Housing Discrimination

Victims of Domestic Abuse Deserve Protection, Not an Eviction Notice

By Elayne Weiss, Washington Legislative Office & Sandra S. Park, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 2:08pm

Imagine coming home to find that you are being evicted from your apartment. But it’s not because you haven’t paid rent; it’s because you are a victim of domestic violence. That’s exactly what happened to ACLU client Tanica Lewis.

In 2006, Tanica and her two daughters were kicked out of their apartment, after her ex-boyfriend violated a protective order and broke into Tanica’s apartment by smashing her windows and kicking in the door. A few days later, Tanica was told she had to vacate the premises because she failed to properly supervise her “guest.” Tanica and her daughters were forced to move into another apartment, but at a higher rent and farther from Tanica’s job.

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07/20/2011

Ending Domestic Violence Requires Holding Police Accountable

By Sandra S. Park, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 10:09am

(Also posted on Daily Kos and Feministing.)

Are restraining orders just pieces of paper, or must the police take action when they are violated? This is the question raised by Valdez v. City of New York, a case challenging the failure of New York City police to enforce a domestic violence order of protection.

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04/01/2011
Myriad Genetics

Our Genes, Our Rights — To Be Argued Monday

By Sandra S. Park, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 5:15pm

The ACLU was before a federal appeals court today arguing that human genes should not be patented.  Arguing with us was Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who argued that patents on human genes issued by the Patent Office are invalid.

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02/29/2012
Sexual Assault in the Military

Exposing the Ugly Details of the Military Sexual Violence Epidemic

By Sandra S. Park, ACLU Women's Rights Project & Rachel Natelson, Service Woman's Action Network at 5:08pm

On Monday, a federal court judge heard oral arguments in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case brought by the Service Women's Action Network (SWAN) and the ACLU seeking records from the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs regarding their response to sexual assault, sexual harassment, and domestic violence in the military. While the hearing has yet to yield a final ruling, one point was clear: the government continues to refuse to disclose documents that could reveal the human toll of military sexual and domestic violence.

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02/03/2012

Breast Cancer Doesn't Discriminate Against Men

By Sandra S. Park, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 1:09pm

Today is World Cancer Day. Today we're reminded that cancer crosses all gender, race, class, and geographic lines and that we must work in unity to treat and prevent it.

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12/08/2011
Gene Patenting

Should Patents Control What Your Doctor Can Think?

By Sandra S. Park, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 4:55pm

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in an important patent case involving the right of physicians to think about how a patient has reacted to a drug, Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories.

Prometheus’ patents claim routine steps taken by doctors in order to see how a patient responds to drugs commonly used to treat automimmune disorders, such as Crohn’s disease. You can check out the precise language of the patent claims at issue here, but in short, Prometheus’ patents consist of the following steps: (1) administer a drug to a patient; (2) determine the effect of the drug by measuring the resulting metabolite levels in a patient’s blood through a standard test; and (3) think about whether to increase or decrease the drug dosage in light of how the patient responded.

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07/30/2011
Myriad Genetics

Who Owns Your Genes? The Case Continues…

By Sandra S. Park, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 8:10am

Today, a divided appellate court upheld patents on two human genes associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. The ruling partially reverses a landmark decision by a federal district court in March 2010 that concluded that human genes cannot be patented. The appellate court did affirm the district court’s invalidation of several claims on methods for comparing two genetic sequences.

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11/08/2010

In Flores-Villar v. U.S., Court Should Overturn Law That Discriminates Against Fathers

By Sandra S. Park, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 3:43pm

When a child is born to an unmarried U.S. citizen living abroad, the parent's ability to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child turns on this question: was the child born to a U.S. citizen father, or mother?

If the child's mother is a U.S. citizen, the child will automatically be a U.S. citizen at birth, so long as the mother previously had lived in the U.S. for one year, at any age.

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09/29/2010

Sexual Assault and Campus Housing: Know Your Rights

By Sandra S. Park, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 12:05pm

The New York Times recently reported that sex offense rates at the campuses and surrounding areas of 12 colleges and universities (including the eight schools in the Ivy League) are 83 percent higher than the overall national average.

This statistic once again highlights the importance of a school’s response to rape. Federal law holds a college or university legally liable when it knows about and ignores sexual harassment or assault in its programs. Because a student who has been subjected to violence or abuse is likely to live near the perpetrator, a key component of any effective response to sexual assault is providing safe housing. However, many schools fail to transfer students into more secure housing or to enforce restraining orders after an assault, jeopardizing students’ safety and rights to equal educational opportunity.

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