Mari Frank Interviews Shirin Sinnar, Esq. Attorney, Asian Law Caucus, Privacy Advocate

Shirin Sinnar is a staff attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, where she works on racial and ethnic profiling, employment discrimination, and other civil rights and workers' rights issues with a particular focus on the South Asian community. Prior to joining the Caucus, she served as an Equal Justice Works fellow with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area on post-9/11 discrimination by employers, financial institutions, landlords, and other private businesses. She is the author of the 2007 Lawyers' Committee report entitled "The OFAC List: How a Treasury Department Terrorist Watchlist Ensnares Everyday Consumers." She served as a law clerk to Judge Warren J. Ferguson of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Santa Ana, California from 2003 to 2004. Sinnar is a co-founder and board member of the Bay Area Association of Muslim Lawyers, which received the State Bar President's Pro Bono Service Award for Distinguished Service in 2006. She is a graduate of Stanford Law School, Cambridge University (M.Phil. in International Relations), and Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges (A.B. in History). Her article, "Patriotic or Unconstitutional? The Mandatory Detention of Aliens under the USA Patriot Act," appeared in the Stanford Law Review in 2003. www.asianlawcaucus.org