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On March 7, 2024, we had an amazing virtual panel to educate the legal community (lawyers and policy advocates) at large about caste discrimination - what caste is, how discrimination around it manifests in modern America, and how the historic movement around SB403 in California in 2023 will impact caste discrimination litigation in the future.
Civil Rights & Workers’ Rights Attorney | Managing Partner at Sanford Heisler Sharp, LLP
David’s practice focuses on discrimination and retaliation, wage and hour, civil rights, and employee benefits cases. David received his law degree magna cum laude and Order of the Coif from New York University School of Law and his Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude from Yale University. While at law school, David worked in the Children’s Rights Clinic and Racial Justice Clinic. He also represented tenants of the New York City Housing Authority in eviction proceedings and successfully petitioned for the release of an incarcerated individual who was serving a life sentence under California’s former “three strikes” law. Read his full bio and notable victories here.
Patrick Patterson
Civil Rights Attorney
Patrick is a civil rights lawyer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was Senior Counsel to the Chair of the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission and Deputy Director of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. He has also taught employment discrimination law, among other subjects, at the University of Wisconsin and UCLA Law Schools, and he served as Assistant Counsel (New York) and Western Regional Counsel (Los Angeles) for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Read his op-ed in Bloomberg Law.
Social Worker, Chair of Policy and Equity Committee at Human Rights Commission (Alameda Community)
Prem Pariyar, a distinguished social worker and community organizer with over 15 years of grassroots experience, hails from Nepal and is a proud alumnus of Cal State East Bay. As someone from a caste-oppressed background, Prem is deeply committed to uplifting and advocating for marginalized communities affected by caste discrimination. He played a pivotal role in pioneering the inclusion of caste as a protected category within the CSU system. His outstanding leadership earned him the SOLAR Award in 2021 for being an exceptional student leader at Cal State East Bay. He holds positions as an elected delegate assembly member at the National Association of Social Workers, California Chapter, and serves as the Region C Director. Recently, Prem has been contributing his expertise as a commissioner and the chair of the policy and equity committee at the Human Relations Commission in Alameda County. His dedication to community service is evident through his efforts in distributing over 3000 boxes of groceries to needy and COVID-19 affected families, along with organizing in-person COVID testing events. Prem has also been at the forefront of the SB-403 campaign in California, demonstrating his commitment to social justice and equity. Read his story in the Los Angeles Times.
Hindu priest and scholar
Sapna is the Founder and CEO of Chingaree Consulting, LLC, a firm established to support the prevention of future harm to communities of color. As part of her work, Sapna serves as an officiant or pandita, conducting progressive and feminist Hindu ceremonies and weddings. She grew up in the United States but has always been in touch with her South Asian roots thanks to her parents, grandparents and dance gurus. Sapna is also a powerful voice for immigrant communities, as she advocates for greater racial equity and resource sharing while reshaping conversations around how our cultural roots and inclusivity connect. She holds a B.A. degree in Religion (focusing on Vedantic Hinduism and Islam) and Biology, as well as a Masters degree in Public Health. Sapna speaks Hindi/Urdu as well as English and Spanish.
(Moderator) Law Student, Former Engineering Program Manager, Founder of Caste Equity Legal Task Force
Tanuja is a former senior engineering program manager of twenty years, with eleven of those years at Google. During this time, she also advocated for workers’ rights in the form of leading a global walkout against sexual harassment in 2018 and successfully lobbying for Google to end its policy of forced arbitration in March 2019. Gupta was a key advocate for HR 4445, which became law in March of 2022, bringing together survivors of sexual harassment around the country to end forced arbitration at the federal level. For this work, she received the 2019 American Association for Justice Steven J. Sharp Public Service Award. While managing a large team at Google and working on some of its highest profile engineering and regulatory initiatives, Tanuja built a diversity, equity and inclusion program that was replicated by several teams within the company. During this time from 2017 - 2023, Gupta also chaired the Board of the Crime Victims Treatment Center and joined the NY Cyber Abuse Task Force, using her tech background for the benefit of survivors. In 2022, Tanuja faced retaliation for blowing the whistle on caste discrimination at Google (read more in The Washington Post and The New Yorker). Upon leaving Google, Gupta founded the Caste Equity Legal Task Force to advocate for legal reforms while studying at Cardozo Law School.
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