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WW presents "Distant Voices," a daily video interview for the era of social distancing. Our reporters are asking Portlanders what they're doing during quarantine.
It can be hard to keep track of all the lawsuits sparked by President Trump's deployment of federal agents to Portland. Imagine trying to file them.
Some of that work falls to Holly Martinez and Rian Peck, two associate attorneys with the Portland law firm Perkins Coie. The pair did pro bono work on a federal lawsuit filed July 27 against several federal law enforcement agencies by four people and two groups active in nightly demonstrations.
The lawsuit goes where Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum went before—it's a bid to restrict the tactics of federal agents near the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse. A federal judge denied Rosenblum's request for a temporary restraining order. (Disclosure: Rosenblum is married to the co-owner of WW's parent company.)
But Martinez and Peck have something Rosenblum didn't: clients who can claim to be directly harmed by the feds' actions. Those clients include the high-profile protest groups Don't Shoot PDX and the Wall of Moms, which were working in tandem this week until an acrimonious split.
In an interview with WW News Editor Aaron Mesh, conducted before Oregon struck a deal to get the feds to withdraw, Martinez and Peck discuss their strategy, what police behavior they want to stop, and whether they get discouraged by how little regard federal agents pay to court rulings while defending the courthouse.