Cecillia D. Wang

In July 2012, Cecillia D. Wang and her co-counsel put Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s public statements before him in a federal courtroom. They played videos of him describing his immigration-enforcement strategies. The trial also gave Latino residents an opportunity to describe what those policies had meant at the roadside.

Daniel Magos, a sixty-seven-year-old United States citizen and small-business owner, testified that a deputy had ordered him and his wife out of their truck and subjected him to a pat-down. The stated reason for the stop was a missing license plate on their trailer. No ticket was issued. Magos broke down while describing the humiliation he felt.

Wang then directed the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. In Ortega Melendres v. Arpaio, her team challenged racial profiling by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office on behalf of a class of Latino residents and Somos America, a Phoenix community organization. The national ACLU, ACLU of Arizona, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and Covington & Burling combined individual accounts with agency correspondence, public statements and statistical evidence.

From an Encounter to a Pattern

Among the clients were Jessika and David Rodriguez, United States citizens who had been stopped while driving with their young children. They described a deputy demanding David’s Social Security card and issuing a citation while other, non-Latino drivers were waved through the same area.

The team used internal correspondence and public statements to establish discriminatory intent. Some operations had followed complaints about people speaking Spanish or gathering in particular neighborhoods. Statistical analysis supplied a different kind of proof: Latino motorists were stopped at higher rates and held longer.

Wang’s co-counsel included Andre Segura, Daniel Pochoda, Anne Lai, Nancy Ramirez, Stanley Young, Andrew Byrnes, Lesli Gallagher and David Hults. After the three-week bench trial in July and August 2012, U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow ruled on May 24, 2013, that the sheriff’s policies and practices violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The court addressed both the selection of a vehicle and the detention of its occupants. Latino ancestry could not be used to choose which vehicles to stop. Suspicion of unauthorized immigration status, without more, did not justify holding a Latino driver or passenger. Wang and the other plaintiffs’ lawyers then had to secure measures that would govern how deputies acted on the road.

An Order for the Patrol Car

On October 2, 2013, Snow issued a supplemental permanent injunction requiring an independent monitor, revised policies and training, and changes to the way the sheriff’s office documented traffic stops. The parties had agreed on some proposed terms and disputed others. The court resolved those differences after an August hearing.

The order required deputies to collect information about every vehicle stop, including those ending without a citation or arrest. They had to record the reason for the stop before contacting the occupants and document how long the encounter lasted. Audits and quality checks would test the accuracy of the records. The monitor and plaintiffs’ representatives were entitled to the collected data, with identifying information kept confidential.

Traffic patrol vehicles were to receive video and audio equipment. Deputies had to start recording as soon as they decided to initiate a stop and continue until it ended. The sheriff’s office had to repair or replace equipment that did not work. These requirements gave the monitor a way to compare the written account with the recorded encounter.

A community advisory board would also hear residents’ concerns and recommend changes to policing and compliance with the court’s orders. Wang and her colleagues had sought that channel despite the sheriff’s office’s opposition. The order required regular public meetings and participation by representatives of both the plaintiffs and the agency.

When the Sheriff Defied the Orders

Wang’s work continued through the proceedings to enforce the judgment. On May 13, 2016, Snow found Arpaio and senior deputies in civil contempt for repeatedly violating the racial-profiling orders. The case now required scrutiny of how the sheriff and his commanders handled misconduct within their own agency.

Wang specified the remedy she wanted: “Strong remedies are needed to protect the community’s rights, starting with internal investigations that root out and punish misconduct.”

On July 31, 2018, the Ninth Circuit upheld an injunction reforming the internal affairs department and addressing other problems established in the civil-contempt trial. Maricopa County had to continue implementing those reforms. The relief Wang and her co-counsel defended thus covered both the original policing practices and the agency’s response when officers violated their obligations.

Criminal Defense and Immigration Law

Wang’s earlier practice had placed individual defendants at the center of her work. After an ACLU fellowship in 1997–98, she worked in the federal public defender’s office in New York and at Keker & Van Nest in San Francisco. In private practice, she also served on the federal Criminal Justice Act panel for the Northern District of California.

She had graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1992, studying English and biology, and from Yale Law School in 1995. She clerked for Ninth Circuit Judge William A. Norris and for retired Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun while working in Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s chambers.

Returning to the ACLU as a staff attorney in 2004, Wang later became managing attorney and director of its Immigrants’ Rights Project. She also taught immigration law as an adjunct lecturer at Stanford and Berkeley.

A National Legal Department

From 2016 to 2024, Wang served as an ACLU deputy legal director and directed its Center for Democracy. Her responsibilities encompassed immigrants’ rights, voting rights, national security, human rights, and speech, privacy and technology.

She became National Legal Director on October 15, 2024, succeeding David Cole and becoming the first woman and first woman of color to hold the position.

Based professionally in San Francisco, Wang now oversees the national ACLU’s legal department, works with legal staff across its fifty-four state affiliates and leads its Supreme Court work. In accepting the appointment, she described herself as a daughter of immigrants carrying forward work made possible by earlier generations.