For Martin Gold, a pro bono lobbying effort of 1,000 hours started with a single lunch. The senior counsel in Covington & Burling’s Washington office was dining in 2009 with acquaintances in China. They mentioned that California had finally formally apologized for decades of legal discrimination against Chinese-Americans.
Gold looked into it, and to his disappointment discovered that Congress had yet to do the same for a series of federal measures between 1879 and 1904 that restricted Chinese immigration and naturalization. He decided to use his years of experience as a lobbyist to change that.
