Michael Jacobs Honored with ABA’s 2024 John Minor Wisdom Award for Pro Bono Work at MoFo

Michael Jacobs, who recently retired from Morrison Foerster, has been named by the American Bar Association (“ABA”) as the 2024 recipient of the John Minor Wisdom Public Service and Professionalism Award. This award is presented in recognition of outstanding contributions to the quality of justice in legal communities, ensuring that the legal system is open and available to all. Michael retired from MoFo in March 2024 after four decades at the firm.

Michael is being honored for his efforts over 25 years to give tangible form to the California state constitution’s promise of equal educational opportunity for all schoolchildren. He has accomplished this through a series of impact pro bono cases that have dramatically improved the quality of education for countless K-12 students in California public schools.

The first of these, Williams v. California, was filed on behalf of thousands of students who attended school in dirty classrooms where they were taught by a series of temporary teachers, often lacking full credentials, and forced to share tattered and outdated textbooks. The case claimed that these conditions denied students their constitutional right to an education. Michael and his team secured a successful conclusion when five bills implementing a settlement agreement were signed into law in 2004. The settlement required all California public schools to provide students with the basic necessities for educational opportunity: instructional materials, safe and decent school facilities, and qualified teachers. It also created a structure to hold schools accountable for meeting these standards. Michael was co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs and participated personally and actively from the start of the investigation in 1999 through post‑settlement implementation. With Michael’s leadership and the firm’s support, MoFo invested 74,000 hours of pro bono attorney time in the Williams case.

In Ella T. v. State of California, brought on behalf of children whose schools utterly failed to impart basic literacy skills, Michael led a team that secured a settlement in 2022 in which the state agreed to spend $50 million on improvements to literacy education in 75 schools that were among those with the lowest third grade reading test scores. The settlement also dedicated $3 million to specialized consulting on the most effective methods for teaching literacy, and addressed disparate school discipline practices, which the plaintiffs alleged were one cause of unequal educational results.

Most recently, in Cayla J. v. State of California, Michael obtained a settlement in February 2024 that secured at least $2 billion in funding to help students who fell behind during the COVID-19 pandemic—one of the largest education-related settlements in U.S. history. The case was brought on behalf of over a dozen plaintiff students against the state of California over claims that they were denied the educational equality guaranteed by the state constitution during remote learning amid the COVID‑19 pandemic. Under the settlement agreement, local education agencies will direct at least $2 billion in existing Learning Emergency Block Grant Funds to evidence-based programs that are proven to improve student outcomes.

Michael Jacobs will receive the John Minor Wisdom Award at the ABA’s 2024 Litigation Section Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. on May 2, 2024.