Vallejos v Commissioner of Registration
Vallejos and Daniel Domingo appealed their cases to the Court of Final Appeal, and were respectively assigned the case numbers FACV 19 and 20/2012. They would be represented before the CFA by Michael Fordham; David Pannick continued to represent the Government. Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma rejected a further application for joinder by eight-year-old Liang Wing-ki, the Hong Kong-born daughter of mainland parents, whose next friend, mother Li Yinxian, filed suit on her behalf. Philip Dykes, for the applicant, argued that because Vallejos and Domingo's case would touch on issues of interpretation of the Basic Law under Article 158, Liang's interests would also be affected. In rejecting Liang's application, Ma stated: "We feel that the points you seem to argue are adequately covered and will be adequately covered". Liang and other Hong Kong-born children like her were ruled to be entitled to the right of abode in Hong Kong in the 2001 case "Director of Immigration v. Chong Fung Yuen".
Regina M. Rodriguez
Rodriguez was born in 1963 in Gunnison, Colorado. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1985 from the University of Iowa. She received a Juris Doctor in 1988 from the University of Colorado School of Law. She began her legal career as an associate in the Denver law firm of Cooper & Kelly, P.C. (now defunct) from 1988 to 1995. She served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado from 1995 to 2002, during which time she served as the Deputy Chief of the Civil Division from 1998 to 1999 and as Chief of the Civil Division from 1999 to 2002. In addition, from 1997 to 1998, she served a four-month detail as Deputy Senior Counsel for Alternative Dispute Resolution in the United States Department of Justice. Previously, from 2002 to 2016, she worked in the Denver office of Faegre & Benson LLP (now Faegre Baker Daniels LLP) as a special counsel until she was elevated to partner in 2005. She is currently a partner in the Denver, Colorado, office of Hogan Lovells US LLP, where she specializes in mass tort and product liability defense.