RECENT AND
ONGOING CASES

In October 2017, a coalition of three law firms, including Paul, Weiss, sued the event’s organizers and participants on behalf of nine victims of the violence under federal civil rights and Virginia conspiracy laws. The case invoked a Reconstruction-era statute originally enacted to combat the Ku Klux Klan. During the litigation, the team secured multiple sanctions against the defendants and key evidentiary rulings, including the right to present expert testimony on white supremacy and antisemitism.

In a historic victory, following a four-week trial in 2021, a federal jury found all defendants liable for conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence and awarded more than $26 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Though the punitive damage award was reduced by the trial court on the basis of Virginia’s punitive damages cap, plaintiffs secured another victory in the appellate court by establishing that Virginia’s punitive damages cap applies on a per-plaintiff, rather than per-case basis. The legal team is now pursuing the judgment enforcement process.

In 2023, in a blistering order awarding judgment, Superior Court Judge Neal Kravitz found that the attack on AME “resulted from a highly orchestrated set of events focused on the Proud Boys’ guiding principles: white supremacy and violence.” He held that “all of the defendants acted with an evil, discriminatory motive based on race,” and that “defendants’ unlawful conduct was reprehensible to an extreme degree.”

The court ultimately awarded the Church more than $2.8 million, including $1 million in punitive damages against the Proud Boys entity and its leaders, Enrique Tarrio, John Turano, Ethan Nordean, Joseph R. Biggs and Jeremy Bertino. The punitive damages award was more than 27 times the amount of compensatory damages — and the fourth-highest amount ever awarded against white supremacists. Paul, Weiss is currently working to enforce the award.

Our client sought declaratory and injunctive relief, as well as damages, to avoid any transfer of the Proud Boys trademark and to impose a lien on the trademark as the principal asset of the Proud Boys.

On February 3, 2025, we won a landmark victory when we obtained a court order transferring the Proud Boys’ rights in their trademark to the Church (Order, No. 2024-CAB-004147), marking the first time a black institution has been awarded the property of a white supremacist organization.

We are continuing to enforce the judgment and obtained orders holding Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio in contempt (Memorandum Op. & Order, No. 2021-CA-000004-B (D.C. Super. June 30, 2023)), issuing fines that now run $400 per day for non-compliance (Order, No. 2021-CA-000004-B (D.C. Super. Feb. 27, 2025)), ordering Tarrio to transfer to the Church his interest in the Proud Boys’ cryptocurrency, “Proud Coin,” and granting the Church an equitable lien against any proceeds Tarrio may recover in a case Tarrio filed against the United States. (Order, No. 2021-CA-000004-B (D.C. Super. Sept. 12, 2025)).

We are also holding the Proud Boys chapters accountable and filed a lawsuit against the Hudson Valley chapter seeking monies from the chapter’s unauthorized use of the Proud Boys name.

Gersh and the Southern Poverty Law Center then brought in Paul, Weiss as co-counsel to help enforce the $14 million judgment. Paul, Weiss obtained an arrest warrant against Anglin, who has gone into hiding, began de-platforming The Daily Stormer and is working to track down Anglin’s assets.

On October 18, 2022, two Richmond residents filed suit against the group, its founder and national director, Thomas Rousseau; network director Paul Gancarz; two other identified Patriot Front members; and 23 “John Doe” defendants, looking to the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and co-counsel Paul, Weiss and Hunton Andrews Kurth for legal representation. Plaintiffs later amended the complaint, adding four more identified Patriot Front members as defendants.

In their federal lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the suit claims that the vandalism represented an act of intimidation, and accuses the Patriot Front of targeting the neighborhood, making the neighborhood feel unsafe. The lawsuit alleges conspiracy to violate civil rights under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 as well as intimidation based on racial animosity under Virginia state law, among other claims.

In March 2024, the court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss in its entirety.

In November 2024, we settled with five named defendants, and in March 2025 with one John Doe defendant, on terms that provide meaningful relief to the plaintiffs and to other residents of the Battery Park neighborhood, where the Arthur Ashe mural is located. We deposed the settling defendants in 2025 and they gave testimony concerning Patriot Front’s organizational structure, policies, and practices, as well as the genesis of the vandalism of the Arthur Ashe mural.

Based on the settling defendants’ testimony (among other things), on September 24, 2025, we moved for default judgments against Patriot Front and Thomas Rousseau, as well as two other Patriot Front members, William Ring and Jacob Brown, seeking compensatory and punitive damages and attorneys’ fees. The motions for default judgment remain pending.

Springfield, which has experienced an influx of Haitian immigrants in recent years, drew media attention as the Blood Tribe marched downtown, with members waving swastika flags, brandishing weapons and yelling racial slurs. The city subsequently received at least 33 bomb threats targeting elementary schools, hospitals, private residences and government buildings. The group also targeted Springfield residents who rebuffed the group’s persistent racist attacks against the local community.

On February 6, 2025, the city filed suit in federal court in the Southern District of Ohio against Blood Tribe, its leaders and certain unnamed individuals, seeking a jury trial on nine counts, including conspiracy to violate civil rights; failure to prevent interference with civil rights; public nuisance; telecommunications harassment; menace; incitement to violence; ethnic intimidation; conspiracy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

On September 18, 2025, U.S. District Judge Thomas Rose denied a motion to dismiss filed by the leader of the Blood Tribe, Christopher Pohlhaus, agreeing that Plaintiffs sufficiently alleged the organization was “formed for the purpose of depriving citizens of their civil rights,” and rejecting Pohlhaus’ attempt to cast doubt on his involvement in the alleged misconduct at the pleading stage. On October 1, 2025, Plaintiffs also successfully won a motion for sanctions against Pohlhaus after he engaged in conduct in the litigation that the Court found “abhorrent to any notion of common courtesy and civility.”