Rachel Lederman

San José Impact-Munition Litigation

During the 2020 racial-justice demonstrations in San José, police fired hundreds of impact munitions into downtown crowds. M. Michael Acosta was walking home when an officer's projectile struck his face and destroyed one eye. He underwent four surgeries to remove the eye globe and reconstruct the socket.

Lederman helped lead the plaintiffs' work in NAACP of San José/Silicon Valley v. City of San José. She examined the officer who fired, the commanders who authorized the weapons, the city's training and crowd-control plans, and its broader use of projectiles and batons during the demonstrations, tying individual injury to command and policy evidence. Medical records documented Acosta's injury and surgeries. Street video and witnesses established where and when officers fired, while command and training evidence addressed authorization and deployment.

San José approved a $3.35 million settlement in September 2023. Acosta received $2.9 million, and four other plaintiffs shared $450,000. The recovery translated constitutional claims into concrete relief for all five plaintiffs.

Weapon, Range, Target, Order

Reasonableness turns on the munition, distance, target, warning, officer, order, available alternatives, and resulting injury. Lederman's cases examine the particular use of force and the circumstances surrounding it rather than treating every device within a broad weapon category as legally identical. She also connected the litigation to California Assembly Bill 48, which restricted the use of impact munitions and chemical agents for crowd dispersal — courtroom proof feeding statewide law.

Oakland Crowd-Control Standards

Lederman's Oakland crowd-control work dates to April 2003, when police used wooden projectiles, beanbags, motorcycles, and other force against antiwar demonstrators and longshore workers at the Port of Oakland. The resulting federal litigation produced compensation and a detailed crowd-control policy — and in the follow-on enforcement case, Spalding v. City of Oakland, the United States District Court retained jurisdiction to enforce it, with Lederman as lead counsel.

The policy limited declarations of unlawful assembly to illegal conduct or a clear and present danger of imminent violence. It required repeated, audible dispersal announcements and safe routes out before arrest, barred indiscriminate firing into crowds, restricted beanbags to identified people presenting an imminent risk, and prohibited intentional motorcycle strikes and the crowd use of specified weapons. Lederman helped turn constitutional principles into instructions officers could follow and courts could enforce.

Scott Olsen at Occupy Oakland

In October 2011, Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen stood in an Occupy Oakland crowd when a police projectile — a lead-filled beanbag round — struck his head. He suffered a fractured skull and permanent brain injury. Video showed people moving to help him and an officer throwing an explosive device toward the group gathered around him.

The shooting violated the very crowd-control policy Lederman had helped overhaul years earlier, and that policy now supplied the standards for judging it: the use of projectiles, the opportunity to disperse, the treatment of an injured person. Lederman and Jim Chanin represented Olsen, and Oakland resolved the case for $4.5 million in 2014 — the rules she had written into law measuring the conduct they were written to prevent.

A Five-Year Mutual-Aid Injunction

Oakland's policy did not automatically bind every outside agency providing mutual aid. During the 2020 protests, Alameda County sheriff's deputies used impact munitions and explosive devices under different rules.

Lederman represented demonstrators Joe Sears and Walter Brown in litigation that closed the gap. The 2022 settlement provided a shared $250,000 recovery and a five-year federal injunction governing both Oakland police and Alameda County deputies. The injunction prohibited shotgun-fired impact munitions into crowds, restricted flashbang-like explosive grenades, and required de-escalation, warning, and an opportunity to leave. It provided that picking up or throwing a chemical canister does not automatically justify shooting the person. The rules apply to political demonstrations and other crowd events, including gatherings after sporting events.

Oscar Grant Protest Mass Arrests

After a November 2010 protest concerning the sentence imposed for the killing of Oscar Grant, Oakland police surrounded approximately 150 demonstrators. The parties later agreed that the group had not received an order or opportunity to disperse before police lines closed. Arrestees remained handcuffed on the street, on buses, and in holding areas for fourteen to twenty-four hours.

Lederman served as lead plaintiffs' counsel in the class action. A $1.025 million settlement provided $9,000 to each named plaintiff and estimated payments of $4,500 to $5,000 for other eligible class members. The agreement required police to cite and release people arrested at demonstrations more quickly, reaffirmed Oakland's crowd-control policy, and set deadlines for moving a nonviolent arrestee from street custody toward release — concrete procedures for citation, transport, processing, and release that ended the practice of jailing protesters for extended periods.

Compensation for Extended Detention

Camarlinghi v. Santa Clara County addressed detention after prosecutors had declined to charge. The class contained 244 people who were not released within a reasonable time after the district attorney's decision.

The court appointed Lederman, Akeeb Animashaun, Janet Herold, and Lucy Bansal as class counsel. In December 2022, it approved a $2.375 million non-reversionary settlement. The settlement used an hourly distribution formula tied to the time each person remained confined after prosecutors declined charges: class members detained from twelve to twenty-four hours received $250 for each compensable hour, and people held beyond twenty-four hours received $250 per hour for the first twelve compensable hours and $295 for each later hour. No class member objected or opted out.

Due Process Before Campus Exclusion

In May 2024, UC Santa Cruz banned more than 110 students and faculty members from campus after arrests at a pro-Palestinian encampment. The exclusions took effect immediately, cutting off access to housing, classes, jobs, meal plans, health care, libraries, and places to take final examinations.

Lederman joined the ACLU of Northern California and Thomas Seabaugh in challenging the bans. California Penal Code section 626.4 permits temporary withdrawal of consent to remain on campus only within defined limits and requires an individualized determination that continued presence poses a substantial threat of significant injury, together with a hearing process. UC Santa Cruz agreed not to exclude a student, employee, or faculty member from campus without an individualized finding and due process.

Challenge to a Phone Warrant

Laaila Irshad was a named plaintiff in the campus-ban suit and a resident adviser. On October 1, 2024, campus police seized her phone during a nighttime fire drill, two weeks after the lawsuit was announced. The warrant reached years of photographs, messages, contacts, searches, political associations, and communications with counsel.

Lederman's team challenged the warrant under the First and Fourth Amendments, California's Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and state constitutional protections. The problem was particularity: a phone can contain a person's life, but a warrant must identify the suspected conduct, the relevant information, and a justified time period. In April 2025, the Santa Cruz County Superior Court limited the search to a thirty-day period surrounding the alleged incident and ordered the university to seal and destroy material outside that period and attorney communications.

Evidence and Individual Relief

Lederman builds each matter from evidence capable of surviving resistance from police agencies and government officials: body-camera and street video, dispatch and command records, weapon logs, medical documentation, arrest and release times, dispersal announcements, policy text, and witness testimony. Those materials allow a settlement or injunction to specify what must change and how compliance can be tested.

Her class work also preserves individual differences. Age, injury, time in custody, medical treatment, and loss remain measurable even when common police conduct supports collective relief. That design lets a single proceeding address repeated action by police agencies while compensation and protection remain connected to each person affected.

Her work spans emergency movement defense, trial preparation, class certification, negotiation, and implementation. The remedies include monetary payments, written operational rules, enforceable injunctions, faster release procedures, individualized due process, and continuing limits on crowd-control force — each depending on a different record and enforcement mechanism, from claimant evidence and class definitions to notice, supervision, and compliance review.

Public-Interest Practice

Lederman graduated from Cornell University and New College of California School of Law and has practiced since 1987. She served as president of the National Lawyers Guild's San Francisco Bay Area chapter and received the Guild's Unsung Hero award; she is a member of the National Police Accountability Project, a founding member of the Oakland Law Collaborative, and a founder of the Water Protector Legal Collective — the legal team at Standing Rock, now an Indigenous-led legal organization.

She now serves as Senior Counsel for the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund and leads West Coast operations for its Center for Protest Law & Litigation from Oakland. Her work includes emergency movement defense, impact litigation, class actions, policy enforcement, appellate advocacy, and training for lawyers responding to mass arrests and protest policing.