Ed represents clients in matters involving constitutional law, First Amendment rights, and related areas including matters involving commercial speech and challenges to regulatory schemes. His experience includes representation of clients in protecting their constitutional rights including religious and political groups concerning their First Amendment rights. He represented one of the first Freedom Riders in a lawsuit establishing the federal government’s duty to protect him from attacks by the Ku Klux Klan when the Freedom Riders arrived in Birmingham, Alabama, resulting in a verdict after trial for his client. The case was remarkable for a number of reasons, including because a then sitting Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States testified concerning the role and policies of the Justice Department at the time of the attack. In other matters, he represented clients in challenges to the implementation of the New York zoning regulations to restrict the content of commercial advertisements on their signs, in matters vindicating his clients’ rights to place ads on issues of public concern in public places and to place art commemorating critical events in the civil rights movement in public places, in challenges to the regulation of charitable solicitations and to the implementation of financial disclosure laws to political parties. Ed represented Hortensia Bussi de Allende, the widow of Chilean President Salvador Allende, and individuals who invited her to speak in the United States, in establishing that the federal Government violated the law in denying her a visa. He represented other individuals, including Gerry Adams, then President of Sein Fein, in similar litigation. He represented a minority political party in groundbreaking litigation against the U.S. government seeking damages for decades of violations of its constitutional rights. Ed has represented a number of religious groups in matters vindicating their rights to the free exercise of religion.
