The New York Times reports….
He challenged redlining banks, employers who discriminated in hiring and, early in his career, Southern counties that thwarted Black voters.
Robert Gnaizda, a lawyer whose deft powers of persuasion in defending the civil and economic rights of the poor and minority groups often rendered messy and costly lawsuits against their adversaries a needless last resort, died on July 11 in San Francisco. He was 83.
The cause was listed as a heart attack. His son Matthew said he had been in declining health for some time.
Mr. Gnaizda (pronounced guh-NAYZ-duh) risked his life gathering evidence in the South in the 1960s to help fight the intimidation that kept Black citizens from registering and voting. He was also an advocate for farm workers and the rural poor, fought discrimination in hiring by police and fire departments, and successfully challenged banks that victimized Black and Hispanic borrowers.
“Bob Gnaizda was, in my opinion, the most imaginative, creative and consequential public interest lawyer of his generation in the United States,” said J. Anthony Kline, presiding justice of the California Court of Appeal in San Francisco, who, with Mr. Gnaizda and two other lawyers, formed a pioneering public interest law firm in California in 1971.
Read full obituary at. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/01/us/robert-gnaizda-dead.html
