Justin Cummins, Co-Director
Justin Cummins, of Miller-O’Brien-Cummins, prosecutes fair housing, employment, and other civil rights cases. He is Chair of the Minnesota State Bar Association’s Labor & Employment Section and an Officer of the National Employment Lawyers Association’s Eighth Circuit Board. Justin teaches courses on fair housing law and civil rights litigation at the University of Minnesota Law School and William Mitchell College of Law, and he spearheaded the development of the Workers’ Rights Clinic at the University of Minnesota Law School. Justin has published numerous articles in national law journals on fair housing and civil rights, mostly recently as the featured author in a symposium on enforcing international human rights law in United States courts. Minnesota Lawyer and Minnesota Law & Politics have recognized Justin as one of the top attorneys in Minnesota. Justin obtained his B.A. in History from Haverford College, his M.A. in Public Policy from the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, and his J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School.
Liam Garland, Co-Director
Liam Garland has worked in public service for more than a decade. Since
2003, he has served as the Director of Litigation for the Housing Rights
Center, a fair housing organization based in Los Angeles, California. As an
attorney for the Neighborhood Law Corps, he served low-income neighborhoods
in Oakland, California. Prior to this, he taught elementary school as a
Teach for America corps member in Compton, California, provided legal
services in San Francisco jails, and wrote a how-to-guide on obtaining
pro-community results from project labor agreements. In 2002, Scarecrow
Education Press published his book, Navigating Treacherous Waters, which
explored the state policy of taking over failing school districts. His work
on housing discrimination has been published in various journals and
magazines, including the Clearinghouse Review: Journal of Poverty Law and Policy, the Institute of Real Estate's Journal of Property Management, and
National Apartment Association's UNITS. Liam earned a Bachelor of Arts
degree from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and a law degree from
the University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall).
Beth Pepper, Co-Director
Beth Pepper, a long-time advocate for people with disabilities, has a practice encompassing civil rights issues: fair housing, employment, public accommodations, education and mental health. Her clients include organizations and providers of services to people with disabilities, families whose children have special needs and individuals with disabilities. Ms. Pepper has litigated several groundbreaking fair housing cases. She argued the landmark Third Circuit case, Hovsons v. Township of Brick, establishing that the civil rights laws supercede local zoning ordinances as applied to housing for people with disabilities. In another significant case, Ms. Pepper helped a fair housing group sue a developer to stop construction of an inaccessible housing development. Among Ms. Pepper’s many publications is the law review article entitled “Discriminatory Zoning Practices,” Maryland Bar Journal, vol.34, Sept./October 2001. Ms. Pepper received her B.A. from the University of Chicago and her J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law.
Amy Robertson, Co-Director
Amy Robertson has close to 20 years of litigation experience, the last 12 years of which have been at Fox & Robertson, the firm she co-founded in 1996. She is a passionate advocate on behalf of those whose fair housing rights have been violated, and has represented both individuals and organizations in that and other civil rights contexts. Ms. Robertson has successfully litigated major civil rights class action litigation, including a nationwide disability access lawsuit brought against K-Mart. Ms. Robertson, a frequent speaker on the ADA and Fair Housing Act, and has been recognized as one of the leading lawyers in Denver. She received her law degree from Yale Law School in 1988.
Craig Gurian, Project Manager
Craig Gurian is Executive Director of the Anti-Discrimination Center. He is also a Scholar-in-Residence at the Stein Center for Law and Ethics at Fordham Law School, and teaches “Employment Discrimination Law and Practice” and “Housing Discrimination: History, Demographics, Law, and Remedies” as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Law School. Mr. Gurian was a principal author of the comprehensive 1991 revisions to the New York City Human Rights Law, the principal author of the Local Civil Rights Restoration Act of 2005, and drafted and provided legal counsel for the advocacy team that successfully enacted Nassau County’s sweeping new fair housing ordinance in August 2006.
Among his publications are Let Them Rent Cake: George Pataki, Market Ideology, and the Attempt to Destroy Rent Regulation in New York (2004), Adding Insult to Injury: Housing Discrimination Against Survivors of Domestic Violence (2005), A Return to Eyes on the Prize: Litigating Under the Restored New York City Human Rights Law (2006), Using Local and State Legislation to Preserve and Expand the Ability of Fair Housing Organizations to Prosecute the Discrimination They Uncover (2007), and Judicial Activism in the Service of Privilege: New York's First Department Makes Special Rules for Special Defendants (2008).
Mr. Gurian has practiced anti-discrimination law since 1988. He successfully litigated the first Title IX sex harassment case tried to a jury in the United States. He has co-counseled matters with a variety of private sector and public sector counsel, and has provided training on discrimination issues for a wide array of bar, community, and not-for-profit organizations. Mr. Gurian received his B.A., J.D., and M.A. (in United States History) from Columbia.