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April 6, 2021 / Press Release

The American Lawyer names Cohen a Midwest Trailblazer

Porter Wright’s Rob Cohen has been named a Midwest Trailblazer in The American Lawyer’s inaugural list recognizing lawyers making a big impact in the legal industry.

Rob was selected for his work on an immigration case that impacted thousands of foreign workers residing in the U.S. In Aug. 2020, Cohen filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of his client and as many as 75,000 of other foreign nationals who had been approved by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to work in the U.S. but had not received their printed Employment Authorization Documents (EADs). The workers were required by law to have the printed EAD in order to continue working.

The judge in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio ordered the USCIS to permit those waiting for their EADs to work before receiving their documents and for the USCIS to produce the EADs by Oct. 2020.

“The injustice of USCIS’s failure to complete this routine function was mind-boggling, and we wanted to address it for our client and the entire class of workers,” said Cohen. “We were thrilled to have reached a settlement to allow them to work legally in the U.S. We think it only fair that if our clients follow all of the rules, the government should do so as well.”

Rob has more than 40 years of experience in the area of immigration and nationality law. He was named an Immigration Trailblazer by the National Law Journal in 2020. He received the 2013 Jack Wasserman Memorial Award from the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) for excellence in immigration litigation for his work on Residential Finance Corporation v. USCIS and has been recognized by Best Lawyers®, the American Lawyers Association, the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the Ohio Chapter of American Immigration Lawyers Association for his work in immigration law.