Deborah Chang

Deborah Chang (Panish Shea & Boyle, Los Angeles, CA) brought the first civil rights class action on behalf of prisoners with AIDS in a maximum security prison which resulted in a landmark settlement and formulation of model policies and procedures relating to the housing, programming and medical treatment of prisoners with AIDS currently used in prisons throughout the country. In 1996, Ms. Chang brought the first lawsuit in the country based on the newly enacted Violence Against Women Act of 1994, 42 U.S.C. § 13981 (VAWA) and successfully argued for the upholding of the constitutionality of the statute in the first federal court to consider the issue. In 2000, she helped conceptualize and launch Legalvote.com, one of the first companies to provide online focus groups from a unique database of nearly 3.5 million Internet users.