ADA Hwang with his daughter at SF Pride
The PILF Award for Public Interest Excellence was created to recognize an individual or organization that has contributed significantly to the struggle for equality, peace and justice. Victor Hwang’s passion for civil rights, exemplified by his tenacious pursuit of justice on behalf of victims of hate crimes as an Assistant District Attorney and his zealous representation in the fields of domestic violence, human trafficking, immigration and elder law as a managing attorney at API Legal Outreach, epitomizes these qualities. His continuing efforts to fight against discrimination and to ensure fair and equal rights for all is particularly inspiring to our students who are deeply committed to the law school’s mission of actively creating a more humane and just world.
About the 2011 Honoree
Victor M. Hwang is currently the Assistant District Attorney in charge of Hate Crimes and Human Trafficking for the City and County and San Francisco. Prior to joining the DA’s office, Mr. Hwang served for six years as the managing attorney of Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach, a legal nonprofit serving victims of domestic violence, human trafficking, and elder abuse. Mr. Hwang has also worked as a staff attorney for the Asian Law Caucus and for nearly five years as a deputy public defender in Los Angeles.
In the course of his twenty years of practice, Mr. Hwang has litigated a number of high profile civil rights cases. His work includes authoring and coordinating the filing of an amicus brief on behalf of the Asian American community in support of marriage equality (Woo v. Lockyer), co-counseling litigation on behalf of a prisoner denied parole for engaging in nonviolent first amendment advocacy (Zheng v, Woodford), a class action against the San Francisco Housing Authority for its failure to protect Southeast Asians from racial violence (Truong v. SFHA), lawsuit for police killing based upon racial stereotypes (Kao v. Rohnert Park), class action on behalf of Hmong veterans denied food stamps (Yang v. Glickman), and the national class action challenge to implementation of the 1996 welfare reform law (Sutich v. Callahan). Mr. Hwang was also a national coordinator of advocacy and amici counsel to family in the case of U.S. v. Dr. Wen Ho Lee.
In addition to his legal work, Mr. Hwang has been an active in a number of community and bar associations. He was appointed to the San Francisco Elections Commission in 2006, served as a past co-chair of the Minority Bar Coalition, and past president of the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area. Mr. Hwang also served on the State Bar Ethnic Minority Relations Commission from 2003 through 2006 and currently sits on the boards of the Bar Association of San Francisco, API Legal Outreach, and Nihonmachi Little Friends.
For his work, Mr. Hwang has been honored as a “Trailblazer” by the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association in 2007, recognized for services “Above and Beyond” by the San Francisco Adult Protective Services Department in 2005, named a “Local Hero” by the Chinese World Journal newspaper in 2005 and by the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 2004, He has also received awards from the Minority Bar Coalition, the Asian American Bar Association, and the Republic of China.
Mr. Hwang has taught as an adjunct professor of law at Golden Gate University and U.C. Berkeley. He is also the co-author of a book entitled “Anti-Asian Violence: Reflections by Asian Americans on Hate, Healing and Resistance,” and has authored a number of law review articles related to his work in civil rights.