LAW OFFICE OF
PETER BIBRING
Police Abuse. Open government. First Amendment.
We focus on high-profile, complex litigation on police abuse, open government, First Amendment, workers’ rights, and other civil rights and civil liberties issues. We aim not only to win justice for our clients, but make sure the wrongs our clients suffered don’t happen again to anyone else.
With more than twenty years’ experience in leading civil rights organizations and in government, advocating in courts, legislatures, city halls and directly with government agencies, we understand the ways the system works and what it takes to change it.
MISSION
At the Law Office of Peter Bibring, we focus on high-profile, complex litigation on police abuse, open government, First Amendment, workers’ rights, privacy, and other civil rights and civil liberties issues. We aim not only to win justice for our clients, but make sure the wrongs our clients endured don’t happen again to anyone else.
We take on the most difficult cases and craft new legal theories to curb abusive police practices, protect journalists and activists, expand public access to information about government, and hold government and corporations accountable to the law. With more than twenty years’ legal experience in both legacy civil rights organizations and in government, advocating in courts, legislatures, city halls and directly with government agencies, we understand the ways the system works and what it takes to change it.
VALUES
We believe those with power, whether governments or corporations, should follow the rules and treat people with justice, fairness, and dignity.
We believe people have the right to live free from abuse by the government and to work without enduring unfair treatment by employers. We believe that the rights to speak, to access and address government, to think and worship, and to keep some things private and left to us alone, bedrocks of our democracy. We think these civil rights and civil liberties should be given the fullest, most expansive meaning possible, in a way that helps level the playing field by supporting the disempowered against the powerful, not the other way around.
We value the highest level of excellence, thoroughness, and integrity in our legal representation, and we think that the best legal work shouldn’t be reserved for the people with the most money and resources.
We take the trust our clients place in us to seek justice for the wrongs they’ve endured as our highest calling. We believe that what matters in the end isn’t just winning a verdict or appellate decision, but that our representation changes the lives of our clients for the better and helps ensure that what happened to them won’t happen to others.
About Peter Bibring
Peter Bibring is a nationally recognized civil rights lawyer and expert in police practices with more than twenty years’ experience litigating in state and federal courts and advocating in the California legislature and local governments.
For seventeen years, Mr. Bibring practiced civil rights law as an attorney at the ACLU of Southern California, where he brought cutting-edge cases on policing, public access to government records, free speech and expression, journalists’ rights, privacy, jail and prison conditions, and racial and religious discrimination. He has litigated cases at all levels of state and federal trial and appellate courts, including the United States Supreme Court and the California Supreme Court. From 2014 to 2021, he led the ACLU’s work on policing in California as Director of Police Practices for the ACLU of California and personally led advocacy that rewrote key California laws governing policing, including those on racial profiling, public access to police records, police use of deadly force, and decertification of police officers who engaged in serious misconduct. His cases helped end use of gang injunctions in California, changed policies at major police departments and state agencies, and helped protect journalists, protestors, unhoused people, workers, and others from government abuse.
From 2023 to 2025, Peter served on the executive team at the Los Angeles County Office of Inspector General, providing oversight of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the Los Angeles County Probation Department, where he investigated and monitored all aspects of those agencies’ operations, including uses of force, deputy-involved shootings and in-custody deaths, internal affairs and discipline systems, jail and detention center conditions, and deputy gangs.
Before joining ACLU SoCal, Mr. Bibring worked in private practice, litigating on behalf of workers against abuses by their employers, working with unions and nonprofits to identify employers with particularly abusive practices and litigating early cases on behalf of domestic workers trafficked by their employers.
Mr. Bibring attended Harvard College and New York University School of Law. He clerked for Judge Marilyn Hall Patel on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California and for Judge Pierre N. Level on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Mr. Bibring also proudly serves as of counsel with Iredale & Yoo APC in San Diego.
Representative Cases
Fazaga v. Federal Bureau of Investigation
142 S. Ct. 1051 (2022)
124 F.4th 637 (9th Cir 2024)
965 F.3d 1015 (9th Cir. 2019)
Class action challenge to FBI surveillance of Muslims in Orange County, California, alleging unlawful targeting because of their religion and unlawful surveillance. Litigated in U.S. Supreme Court on whether provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allowing challenges to legality of electronic surveillance conducted for national security purposes pre-empt the state secrets doctrine.
Gente Organizada v. City of Pomona
Case No. 20STCV28895
(L.A. Super. Ct. July 30, 2020)
Taxpayer action challenging Pomona Police Department’s policies and training on use of force as inconsistent with higher legal standards established by California legislation (AB 392), resulting in settlement requiring policy and training to be consistent with state law.
Vasquez v. Rackauckas
734 F.3d 1025 (9th Cir. 2013)
and
Youth Justice Coalition v. City of Los Angeles
264 F.Supp.3d 1057 (C.D. Cal. 2017)
Coordinated cases holding that the prevailing way police and prosecutors in California used "gang injunctions" violated constitutional due process. In Vasquez, following appeal from 11-day bench trial, the Ninth Circuit established that due process prohibits police and prosecutors from subjecting individuals to a gang injunction without first providing an opportunity for a hearing on whether they are active gang members.
In Youth Justice Coalition, brought a class action challenge under Vasquez on behalf of nearly ten thousand people subject to gang injunctions in Los Angeles, winning preliminary injunction and resulting in negotiated settlement with the City of Los Angeles dramatically transforming the process for applying gang injunctions to thousands of individuals in order to provide constitutionally required due process.
Vayeghan v. Kelly
2017 WL 396531
(C.D. Cal. Jan. 29, 2017)
Challenge on behalf of one of the first individuals refused entry to the United States under executive order limiting travel from predominantly Muslim countries, winning first order returning that the U.S. return a person removed under the travel ban.
Winston v. City of Los Angeles
Case No. BS 169474
(L.A. Super. Ct., Apr. 24, 2017)
Challenge to department’s systematic failure to respond timely to public records requests. Settlement required substantial revision to department’s public records policies and procedures, as well as creation of an online portal for public to submit and track public records requests and receive responses. Litigation resulted in major changes to the staffing and structure of the department’s public records division.
United States v. Los Angeles
Case No. CV 00-11769 (C.D. Cal.)
Represented (from 2006 to 2012) community intervenors in U.S. Department of Justice consent decree over Los Angeles Police Department.
Nee v. County of Los Angeles
Case No. 11-8899
(C.D. Cal., filed Oct. 27, 2011)
Challenge to L.A. Sheriff’s Department policy of treating photography of police and public buildings as suspicious activity and detaining, searching, threatening, and arresting photographers, leading to settlement establishing new policy and training on photography and First Amendment.
Gordon v. City of Moreno Valley
687 F.Supp.2d 930 (C.D. Cal. 2009)
Challenge to racially targeted searches of Black barbershops in Moreno under the guise of administrative inspections by the state Board of Barbering & Cosmetology, resulting in settlements establishing new statewide requirements for inspectors to conduct operations with law enforcement, as well as policies prohibiting racial bias and anti-bias training for command staff of Riverside Sheriff’s Department.
Fitzgerald v. City of Los Angeles
485 F.Supp.2d 1137
(C.D. Cal. 2007)
Class action challenging unconstitutional searches by LAPD targeting unhoused people in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles, resulting in settlement requiring new department-wide training on searches.
Wang v. Chinese Daily News, Inc.
435 F.Supp.2d 1042 (C.D. Cal. 2006) 236 F.R.D. 485 (C.D. Cal. 2006)
231 F.R.D. 602 (C.D. Cal. 2005)
From 2004 to 2006, represented workers at a Chinese language newspaper in wage and hour action in discovery, class certification, and summary judgment, winning important holdings on class certification in wage-and-hour actions, classification of reporters, and entitlements to meal and rest breaks under California law.
PRACTICE
AREAS
POLICE PRACTICES
Excessive force, police shootings, jail deaths, unlawful search, false arrest, discriminatory policing, and other abuses.
PUBLIC RECORDS
Access to public records under California Public Records Act and federal Freedom of Information Act.
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
COMPLEX LITIGATION
Right of protestors and public speakers, freedom of speech, Anti-SLAPP, and freedom of religion.
Class actions, ground-breaking legal theories, emergency litigation for injunctive relief.
WORKERS RIGHTS
Wage and hour violations and workplace discrimination.
POLICY ADVOCACY
Legislative and policy advocacy campaings, legislative drafting.
CONTACT
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