Challenging Injustice. Creating Solutions. Then and Now.
The climate emergency and a lack of inclusive vision to solve it are the greatest threats to our human family. Join us in exposing injustice, enforcing accountability, amplifying underrepresented voices, and creating a new model that makes the world a better and safer place for future generations.
–Sara Nelson, Romero Institute Executive Director
Game-Changing Programs
We’re home to two projects that make a difference in the world.
Through public education and grassroots organizing, we build the people power necessary to implement community-led statewide solutions to the global climate crisis.
We partner with the Lakota to secure their rights to autonomy and self-determination, protect sacred lands and water from pipelines and other imminent threats, and win the return of children seized by South Dakota’s Department of Social Services.
“A very great vision is needed, and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky.”
–Crazy Horse, Oglala Sioux
Early Victories
Our co-founders have led many of the most significant litigation, investigation, public education, and grassroots organizing efforts that have defined social justice for over 50 years.
Under a new application of the provisions of the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Criminal Organizations Act (RICO), Christic brought charges against and exposed 29 people involved with the Iran-Contra Affair. (Avirgan v. Hull, et al)
The first vindicating argument in the American Sanctuary Movement came from Christic’s defense of Catholic workers who provided sanctuary for refugees seeking political asylum. (U.S. v. Stacey Lynn Merkt, et al.)
When Reactor 2 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, suffered a partial meltdown on March 28, 1979, the Christic Institute legal team was called in to help oversee the legal proceedings and represent victims of the disaster.
