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AABANY CONGRATULATES GLENN MAGPANTAY AS
RECIPIENT OF THE NEW YORK STATE BAR ASSOCIATION’S HAYWOOD BURNS MEMORIAL AWARD

For immediate release: February 2, 2015
Contact: Yang Chen, Executive Director, (718) 228-7206

NEW YORK – February
2, 2015 – The Asian American Bar Association of New York (“AABANY”) is proud to
announce that AABANY’s LGBT Committee Chair Glenn Magpantay was the recipient
of the 2015 Haywood Burns Memorial Award, presented by the New York State Bar
Association (“NYBSA”) on January 29, 2015 at the New York City Hilton Midtown
as part of their Annual Meeting.

The Haywood
Burns Memorial Award, given to honor the late civil rights lawyer and academic
Dean W. Haywood Burns, is presented each year by NYBSA’s Committee on Civil
Rights to an individual who has contributed to New York State in a manner that
reflects Dean Burns’ commitment to the struggle for justice and the qualities
that made him an outstanding advocate for civil rights and the empowerment of
the powerless. AABANY was proud to nominate Mr. Magpantay’s nomination for this
award.

Mr. Magpantay
is now the Executive Director of the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander
Alliance. Immediately before that, he spent sixteen years at the Asian American
Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), defending and promoting the voting
rights of Asian Americans. Mr. Magpantay has fought to expand access to the
right to vote, leading AALDEF’s Annual Asian American Election Protection
Project, the nation’s largest poll monitoring and multilingual voter survey
program for Asian Americans. As a civil rights litigator, Mr. Magpantay engaged
in impact litigation and has filed several briefs for the U.S. Supreme Court
regarding involving voting rights and language access in the Asian American
community. He has fought for the fair political representation of racial and
ethnic minorities in Congress, the State House, and City Hall and worked on
many redistricting battles. Mr. Magpantay is an adjunct law professor at
Brooklyn Law School, and an undergraduate teacher at Hunter College. In
addition to inspiring many lawyers and law students to engage in pro bono work
through his organizing efforts as a former Chair of AABANY’s Pro Bono
Committee, he also inspires the legal community through his teaching and
scholarship on many topics, such as constitutional theory and strategies to
safeguard minority political participation. Mr. Magpantay currently serves as
the Chair of AABANY’s LGBT Committee, which he founded.

As stated by
Executive Director Yang Chen in the introductory remarks given on the night of
the awards ceremony, “Glenn is an exemplary advocate, scholar, mentor and
leader in the public interest. He gives voice to the voiceless, power to the
powerless. He stands up for the unrepresented and under-represented in our society….
Now more than ever we need lawyers and individuals like Glenn to teach us and
remind us of the need to continue fighting for the civil rights of all
Americans. AABANY commends NYSBA for recognizing Glenn with the Haywood Burns
Memorial Award, and we congratulate Glenn on a well-deserved and auspicious
honor.”

_

For more
information, please contact Yang Chen, AABANY Executive Director, at (718)
228-7206, or direct any inquiries to [email protected].

The Asian American Bar
Association of New York is a professional membership organization of attorneys
concerned with issues affecting the Asian Pacific American community. Incorporated in 1989, AABANY seeks not only
to encourage the professional growth of its members but also to advocate for
the Asian Pacific American community as a whole. AABANY is the New York regional affiliate of
the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA).

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Photos courtesy of Francis Chin.