The California State Bar has placed Wayne Hsiung on involuntary inactive status.  This action results from his conviction in November 2023 in a case relating to two counts of misdemeanor trespass and one count of felony conspiracy to trespass.  The case involved protest actions in 2018 and 2019 on Sunrise Farms and Reichardt Duck Farm in Sonoma County.

Hsiung entered university at 16, graduated from the University of Chicago in 2001 and subsequently from the University of Chicago Law School. He was previously funded by the National Science Foundation as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but did not complete his degree in economics. He was a Searle Fellow and served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Northwestern University School of Law. In 2020, he ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of Berkeley, CA. focusing on animal rights issues but gaining 24 percent of the vote. 

In 2021, Hsiung co-founded the Simple Heart Institute dedicated to “open rescue” (read intrusion and theft).  Despite his academic achievements, it is evident that Hsiung is an animal rights zealot lacking in perspective and with a self-centered preoccupation with opposition to livestock production coupled with a disdain for the legal process, hence the action by the California State Bar.