Immigrant of the Day: Anthony Ofodile (Nigeria)
The New York New York Law Journal recently profiled our Immigrant of the Day, Brooklyn civil rights lawyer Anthony Ofodile, who
Four former employees charged Spitzer with employment discrimination. The plaintiffs, who had worked as a doorman and porters at a luxury apartment building owned by Spitzer, alleged that her ordered a building superintendent to fire them and replace them with lighter-skinned, Hispanic workers. One man also claimed that he, unlike his fairer co-workers, was required to scrub a toilet with a toothbrush. The jury awarded the men $1.3 million.
The same day Spitzer testified in the case a Brooklyn judge ruled in favor of Ofodile’s clients in a federal civil rights action. The case involved two Arab men taken into custody after speaking loudly and checking their watches frequently on a flight from San Diego to John F. Kennedy International Airport. In that decision, Judge Frederic Block held that a suspect’s ethnicity cannot serve as a factor in determining whether the government had probable cause for their “de facto arrests.”
Ofodile as a young man in Nigeria traveled as far as eight miles round-trip each morning, carrying a bucket of water for his family. He graduated in the top two of his class of 450 at the University of Nigeria where he stayed on for law school.
As a young attorney, Ofodile soon settled into a small practice specializing in civil rights and employment discrimination cases. He built his practice by taking out advertisements in smaller, cheaper publications targeted toward lower-income communities, such as the Hispanic Yellow Pages.
Current clients include a group of Russian emergency medical workers claiming employment discrimination, a white City University of New York professor alleging sexual discrimination, and a white assistant principal who is suing the New York City Education Department for allegedly retaliating against her for reporting the abuse of children.
KJ