by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

March 19, 2009

Ask Emily Goldberg how she became a civil rights lawyer and she will trace her career path back to her childhood in Morris County.

“Millington was a bastion of conservatism, absolutely,” she said. “There was a fair amount of discrimination — certainly against people of color. It was a very white world. Just the absence of people of color was certainly something I noticed growing up and didn’t feel comfortable with.”

Growing up Jewish was also a factor, she told NJJN in a March 12 phone conversation.

“I felt anti-Semitism from a very early age, and in some ways I am very grateful for that because it gave me a sense of what minorities deal with in this country. It prompted me to think about civil rights issues in a more personal way.”

That commitment has earned Goldberg a Legal Leadership Award from the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.

She will be honored Thursday, March 26, along with Chris Michie at the Newark Club. The ACLU says the two are “attorneys whose work has made an impact through the year for New Jersey’s civil liberties.”

Both are currently involved in a class-action lawsuit against Passaic County, its government officials, and the state corrections commissioner, charging inhumane conditions at the county jail.

“It is the worst detention facility in the state of New Jersey,” said Goldberg. “I’ve met with dozens of inmates there who have been at a lot of facilities, and they say there is no question this is the worst. They are pleading guilty and looking forward to the day they can get to prison because the jail is so horrible.

“I believe as a citizen of the state of New Jersey there should not be a place like the Passaic County Jail.”

‘Progressive NJ courts’

From her desk at Seton Hall University Law School, where she is a visiting associate clinical professor in the Civil Litigation Clinic, Goldberg described herself as “one of those boring lawyers who works too much.”

Even before she attended law school at New York University, Goldberg worked on behalf of clients — some of whom were behind bars.

She is challenging the death sentence of an Alabama man who, she said, “had brain damage and internal abuse — issues that were not pointed out because of the ineffective assistance of his lawyer.”

In New Jersey, she won a settlement of a class-action lawsuit involving prisoners who alleged they were not receiving treatment for HIV/AIDS.

Goldberg also represented Harriet Bernstein and Luisa Paster, a lesbian couple who sued for the right to hold their civil union ceremony on the boardwalk in Ocean Grove after they were denied by the boardwalk’s owner, an association affiliated with the United Methodist Church.

The women won a ruling by the state’s Division on Civil Rights, but they now face a court challenge by the Methodist Church. Their attorney hopes “there will be same-sex marriage in this state in the next five to 10 years.”

In general, Goldberg said, she believes “the state courts in New Jersey have shown themselves to be much more progressive than the courts in other states. But obviously, the federal courts have become a lot more conservative in the past eight years. That is the reality for any civil rights practitioner across the country, and if we have a choice, we are more inclined to go the state court route.”

Despite its challenges, Goldberg said, “I have a fabulous job. I cannot complain. When I have time off, I enjoy spending it with my friends and my family and catching up on a good book.”

She considers her award “a real honor for me. I have so much respect for the lawyers at the ACLU, for their commitment and the work they are doing. To have that respect reflected back is an honor.

“And my mother will kvell,” she said.

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