Justice for Women and Girls

Lifting both the legal and non-legal barriers to meaningful education for girls is critical to achieving success in the fight for educational equity. Research clearly demonstrates that incidents of sexual assault can lead to poor performance in school, increased mental health problems, and increased school dropout rates. One powerful way to increase access to long-term, quality education is to decrease the rate of sexual violence perpetrated against school-age girls.

Gibson Dunn works with the Schools Consent Project (“SCP”), a nonprofit organization that sends lawyers and law students into schools across the UK and New York to teach young people about consent and the laws governing sexual offenses. The aim of SCP is to normalize conversations about consent, encourage respectful interactions between young people, provide them with a toolkit to change the culture in schools, universities, and workplaces—and ultimately reduce sexual violence. Gibson Dunn lawyers are trained to deliver SCP’s workshops to 11–18-year-olds on topics covering the definition of consent, the ages of consent, how to identify consent, bystander intervention, the options available in the event of sexual assault, and the offenses of rape, sexual assault, and “sexting”/“nudes.”

Gibson Dunn is also proud to support organizations that focus on providing high-quality education to at-risk women and girls. In 2024, we secured a complete victory on behalf of our client, New Village Charter School, supporting its important work on behalf of young women in Los Angeles. Since 2006, New Village has served an extremely high-needs population of high school students in Los Angeles, many of whom were at risk of not completing school due to numerous hardships, such as homelessness, poverty, teen pregnancy and parenthood, abuse, trauma, or justice system involvement. But in 2023, the California Department of Education deemed New Village ineligible for funding appropriated by the California Legislature because it concluded that it was non-classroom based—despite the fact that it has a 9,300 square foot campus and nine fully equipped classrooms, employs teachers and counselors, and complied with attendance requirements. Gibson Dunn challenged this determination and the Court agreed, ordering the State and its Superintendent of Education to lawfully determine New Village’s eligibility and pay New Village more than $255,000 in needed funding.

Prioritizing women’s and girl’s health and access to quality healthcare is paramount to empowering women around the world. Access to healthcare for women and girls includes the need to address the full range of reproductive care, including maternal care, postpartum care, and access to safe abortion care.

The United States has a pregnancy health crisis, with a national maternal mortality rate around ten times higher than other high-income countries. Black mothers face disproportionately high rates of mortality. Many estimates place the risk of dying during or after childbirth between three and four times higher for Black women—a disparity driven by a complex interplay of factors, including racism, sexism, lack of access to quality care, and socioeconomic challenges. Gibson Dunn partners with several nonprofit organizations working on the front lines to end this intolerable disparity. Our lawyers have assisted organizations striving to ensure that all families have access to safe, respectful, and equitable care throughout the birthing process and during the postpartum period. This includes representing organizations focused on increasing access to holistic perinatal care and advocacy in the form of midwives and doulas.

Gibson Dunn is also proud to fight on behalf of access to safe reproductive healthcare throughout the United States. Gibson Dunn, along with Wyoming counsel, represents a group of women, OBGYNs, and abortion providers in challenging Wyoming’s 2023 anti-abortion legislation, which included a first-of-its-kind ban on abortion medications. On November 18, 2024, the Wyoming District Court granted a summary judgment motion on behalf of Plaintiffs and entered a permanent injunction preventing the statewide abortion legislation from taking effect. The Court’s opinion was based on a provision of the Wyoming Constitution creating a fundamental right of citizens to make their own health care decisions. The District Court agreed that abortion constitutes health care protected by the Constitution and found that the State failed to demonstrate a compelling interest in enacting its abortion legislation sufficient to override Plaintiffs’ fundamental right in healthcare access.

Working to ensure the law is harnessed as a tool for empowerment of women is an important role for lawyers to play in the ongoing fight for equality under the law.

In August 2023, a team of litigators in Gibson Dunn’s New York office secured the dismissal of all claims filed against their client, Lonna Ralbag, in a case arising from her long-running advocacy for herself and other agunot, or “chained women.” The term agunot refers to women who are trapped in religious marriages by husbands who refuse to give them a “get” (i.e., a bill of religious divorce under Jewish law). Without a valid get, agunot are unable to remarry, even if they are considered divorced in the eyes of American civil law. Nearly ten years ago, Ms. Ralbag’s ex-husband civilly remarried, while still refusing to provide Ms. Ralbag a get from a valid rabbinical court. Since then, Ms. Ralbag has advocated nationally for her religious divorce, organizing protests and pickets and speaking out on behalf of the rights of other agunot. After Ms. Ralbag’s ex-husband’s family sued her for defamation in New York Supreme Court, arguing that her public advocacy wrongly accused them of supporting her ex-husband’s get-denial, Gibson Dunn represented Ms. Ralbag and obtained a favorable ruling dismissing all claims against her in their entirety.

Gibson Dunn has also helped mothers secure their rights as parents, representing Ms. D in a Hague Convention petition proceeding in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where her husband filed for return of their children to Armenia, which he claimed was the family’s “habitual residence.” The Hague Convention was established for the purpose of protecting children from international abductions by establishing procedures for their prompt return to their place of habitual residence. Of late, however, it has become a mechanism for abusive partners seeking to gain custody of their children. Ms. D fled Armenia with the children due to her husband’s mental and physical abuse, which had escalated upon the family’s move there only 16 weeks before. The Gibson Dunn team identified evidence that disproved Ms. D’s husband’s claims that the family “habitually resided” in Armenia and unearthed evidence that Ms. D and her children stood to suffer a grave risk if they were required to return to Armenia (an exception to the Hague Convention’s requirement of return if habitual residence is established).  Using this evidence, the team secured a dismissal with prejudice of Ms. D’s husband’s suit, as well as a court order with conduct-related conditions attached—unheard of in a dismissal with prejudice, and establishing new law.

Gibson Dunn is committed to advancing the cause of economic empowerment for women and girls. By fighting to give women equal access to economic opportunities, we empower them to enjoy the same inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that everyone deserves.

Gibson Dunn routinely engages in direct representations of women starting and running their own small businesses, providing pro bono legal services as they build and grow their economic footprint. In one representation, the Firm provided pro bono legal services to Kasandra, a small business owner based in Sacramento, California. Kasandra has worked tirelessly to build her business from the ground up, turning her dream of sharing delicious Arab-Mexican fusion food into a pop-up restaurant and catering business, and now, with the firm’s assistance, into a full-service brick-and-mortar location. Our attorneys worked on Kasandra’s behalf to conduct an environmental review of the prospective brick-and-mortar location, negotiate Kasandra’s lease agreement, form a corporate entity for the restaurant and catering business, and create employment and catering agreements that will scale as Kasandra’s business grows further.

In seeking to advance justice for women and girls, it is critical that we work both to prevent violence against women and to ensure that, when violence is perpetrated, those responsible are held to account. Over 40% of women report having experienced violence or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime. For the women who survive these reprehensible encounters with violence, the trauma they suffer can change the course of their lives. Survivors report lasting physical, emotional, and psychological harm, including a feeling of having lost any sense of safety in their daily lives that they previously enjoyed. Through their pro bono work, Gibson Dunn’s attorneys harness their skills to navigate the justice system to provide survivors with recourse against their abusers and, hopefully, safety from any future harm.

In the UK, Gibson Dunn is proud to be a founding member of the Domestic Abuse Response Alliance (“DARA”), an advocacy alliance made up of ten law firms. DARA was launched to represent survivors of domestic abuse who are ineligible for legal aid and who cannot afford to pay for private representation. One of the most notable cases coming from DARA involved an 87-year-old woman who had suffered from years of financial and emotional abuse at the hands of her son. The Firm successfully obtained a restraining order to protect the client and guided her through the proceedings while also navigating the sensitivities of the subject matter and the familial dynamics at play.

Gibson Dunn is also proud to partner with New York-based Sanctuary for Families to represent women seeking final orders of protection against their abusers, including our recent work on behalf of Ms. C against her abusive ex-partner. Ms. C left the abusive relationship, but her abuser continued to threaten and harass her and her mother. Ms. C’s ex-partner threatened to expose intimate images of her, in an attempt to control her actions. Although Ms. C had obtained a temporary order of protection in New York Family Court prior to our engagement, she needed assistance in seeking a permanent order of protection to help her put the awful relationship behind her forever. We established that Ms. C’s abuser had committed a family offense against her, and the Court granted a final order of protection—an incredible win that enabled Ms. C to continue her healing journey and move forward with her life without fear.

Of course, not all incidents of violence that women suffer come at the hands of an intimate partner. We represented “Jane,” who was sexually assaulted after having her drink spiked during a “networking” dinner. After the assault—which resulted in ongoing medical complications, a traumatic brain injury, and severe psychological distress—Jane filed assault and battery, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress claims against the perpetrator. The abuser was a foreign national employed by the United Nations (“UN”) and living overseas, and he willfully avoided service to avoid having to appear in court. After tracking down several email addresses from reports of various UN conferences he attended, Gibson Dunn successfully moved for alternative service via these emails so the abuser could be held liable. We then briefed whether the abuser was entitled to diplomatic immunity. The court agreed that the abuser was not owed any immunity and ultimately issued an Order of Default against the abuser after he failed to respond to the proceedings. The court awarded Gibson Dunn’s client more than $2.5 million in compensatory damages, punitive damages, and post-judgment interest.