Three 10-year protection orders later: Still fighting, still undeterred 

By Joyce Shui, Esq.* 

Sharply punctuating the relentless barrage of legal battles I’ve navigated this past month was a video on Saturday from the current president in which he piloted a fighter jet to dump feces on Americans engaged in one of the most quintessentially human acts (speaking) and perhaps the most patriotically American acts (speaking out against tyranny and oppression). The reality is this: Trump and his followers do not want us to exist. If they can deter and criminalize our everyday (including patriotically American behavior of speech) and fully silence us, then we will not exist.

On Thursday, Oct. 23, I’ll fully embroil in two related legal matters. In the morning, I’ll be finishing and filing a brief to defend my pro bono client against claims that she is not allowed to speak to the city council. In the afternoon, I’ll be in another court, defending my constitutional right to speak, my right to work as an attorney, and my right to be free from harassment by someone who already has three separate ten-year protection orders against her, each obtained by other Asian American women.

As I prepare for these matters and reflect on three years of painfully slow progress in a series of cases where there are at least five victims (all of us people of color), I’m reminded of lessons from one of my favorite law school classes: Evidence, taught by the late Professor Rob Aronson (R.I.P.). I remember learning about the phenomenon of unequal weight given to witness testimony depending on a witness’s race—a truth that has only grown more vivid over time.

Most people already know that eyewitness testimony can be unreliable. What many still fail to grasp is that the perceived credibility of witnesses is also filtered through bias. Two lessons from that class have always stayed with me. First, it can take several witnesses from a marginalized group to carry the same “weight” as a single witness from a favored demographic. Second, I recall a case where a judge sought to limit how many witnesses from a disfavored group could testify. The attorney replied, in essence: “I will put on as many witnesses as needed—until either the other side stipulates to the truth of what they’re saying or the court is convinced of it.” That insistence left an impression on me—both as a recognition of the deep bias we must confront and as a model of the persistence required to overcome it.

Decades later, those lessons feel painfully relevant. In my recent pro bono cases, as in my own hearing, racial bias remains visible to those of us in marginalized communities—especially Asian Americans—but often invisible to those in power. Too many judges have been persuaded by the testimony of a white woman who has repeatedly perjured herself. Under any fair or non-racist standard, a person who has demonstrably lied multiple times should not be deemed credible, particularly when she continues to direct false accusations at women of color.

To date, three ten-year protection orders have been granted to three Asian American women against this same individual—a woman who objects not to her own racist conduct, but to being called racist. Like the others, I have now become her target. Her goal is clear: to silence.

The question I keep returning to is this: how many women of color must be harmed, how many must seek protection orders, how many must sacrifice years of our time and peace, before our institutions finally believe us—and act decisively to stop the harassment? The answer I keep returning to, and demand the court to acknowledge, is this: I exist, and I will never stop fighting.

*Joyce Shui earned her degrees from Harvard University (A.B.) and New York University (J.D.). She is a regional manager for a compliance team at SAP, pro bono/volunteer attorney for issues impacting vulnerable and marginalized demographics, children’s book author, and former elected Bellevue School Board director. Her opinions, including a recent LinkedIn post on protecting speech and self-expression, are hers personally and do not necessarily reflect the view of any organization with which she is, or has been, affiliated.