• John P. Relman, one of the nation's foremost experts on fair housing and fair lending law, served for many years as project director of the Fair Housing Project at the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.
• Stephen M. Dane has been litigating civil rights cases of all kinds for over 25 years, and is nationally recognized in the fields of fair housing, mortgage lending discrimination, and homeowners insurance redlining.
• Michael Allen, former senior staff attorney at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, is nationally known for his work on disability, fair housing and community opposition to affordable housing.
• Bradley H. Blower served as an assistant director and senior attorney in the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection from 1998 to 2004, where he managed and litigated cases involving consumer credit, predatory lending and financial privacy.
• Scott Chang is one of California's best known fair housing attorneys and has been litigating fair housing and other civil rights cases for nearly 14 years.
• Reed Colfax served as project director of the Fair Housing Project at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs from 2001 to 2004.
• Katherine Gillespie has experience in a variety of areas of civil rights law, including employment discrimination, police misconduct, and immigrant and women's rights. She has also conducted internal investigations and counseled corporate clients regarding federal government investigations. 
• Thomas J. Keary came to Relman and Dane from the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice (1985 – 2007).
• Jennifer Klar specializes in employment discrimination and police misconduct matters. She currently represents a putative nationwide class of all African-American Special Agents of the United States Secret Service claiming racial discrimination with respect to promotion by the Secret Service. Her other employment matters include sexual harassment and retaliation claims.
• Megan Moran-Gates worked in the Employment Discrimination Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights.
• Glenn Schlactus has litigated complex federal lawsuits since 1999 and has provided compliance advice and counseling to financial institutions on fair lending issues.
• Sandra M. Wilmore served as an attorney in the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection from 1972 to 2005, where she developed and litigated cases involving consumer credit, lending discrimination, and predatory lending.
• Brook Hopkins is the 2008-2009 Relman Civil Rights Fellow.

To contact one of our attorneys, paralegals, or staff members, please click here.

Relman & Dane has handled some of the most important and high-profile civil rights cases brought to date.

• John Relman was co-lead counsel in the Denny's Restaurant class action cases ($17.725 million class settlement for racial discrimination against customers).
• Mr. Relman served as lead counsel in a major race discrimination class action involving Avis Rent-A-Car ($5.4 million settlement).
• Mr. Relman was co-lead counsel in a case brought against the Adam's Mark Hotel chain, which resulted in an $8 million settlement on behalf of guests discriminated against in Daytona Beach during the 1999 Black College Reunion.
• Stephen Dane served as lead counsel for the class of plaintiffs in Toledo Fair Housing Center v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. ($4.5 million settlement) and as co-counsel for the plaintiffs in HOME v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. ($100.5 million jury verdict), both cases involving allegations of homeowners insurance redlining.
• Mr. Dane also served as lead counsel for plaintiffs in Preferred Properties, Inc. v. Indian River Estates, Inc., 276 F.3d 790 (6th Cir. 2002), which established the standard for an award of punitive damages in the 6th Circuit, and Old West End Ass'n v. Buckeye Federal Savings & Loan, 675 F. Supp. 1100 (N.D. Ohio 1987), which set forth the elements of a prima facie case of mortgage redlining.
• Bradley Blower was lead counsel of the FTC's predatory lending case against Capital City Mortgage Corporation and managed several of the Commission's other major predatory lending cases, including the First Alliance Mortgage Corp. settlement and the Stewart Finance Company, Inc. case.
• Mr. Blower managed several of the Commission's important FCRA/FACTA cases including the settlements with Quicken Loans, Sprint, AT&T and Imperial Palace.
• Mr. Blower was lead counsel in the FTC's privacy investigation of DoubleClick and managed several of the Commission's privacy initiatives, including the settlement with Toysmart and enforcement of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in the Operation Detect Pretext cases.

Each of our attorneys also is well known for his or her writing, mediation and advocacy work in the civil rights area.

• Mr. Relman has written and lectured extensively in the area of fair housing and fair lending and is author of the widely used and respected Housing Discrimination Practice Manual, published by the West Group. He serves as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.
• Mr. Relman is the author of Fair Housing Enforcement and the Legacy of Brown, included in Fifty Years Later: Brown v. Board of Education and Housing Opportunity (The NIMBY Report, September 2004), published by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
• Mr. Relman is a co-author of Designing Federal Legislation That Works: Legal Remedies for Predatory Lending, in Why The Poor Pay More: How to Stop Predatory Lending (Gregory D. Squires, ed., 2004).
• Mr. Dane has testified before both houses of Congress on mortgage lending discrimination and regularly speaks to lenders, private fair housing groups, and to state and federal investigators on the topic. He is the author of many articles in the field, including the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights' Report, Federal Enforcement of the Fair Lending, Equal Credit Opportunity, and Community Reinvestment Laws in the 1980's, Chapter XVI of One Nation, Indivisible (1989); Eliminating the Labyrinth: A Proposal to Simplify Federal Mortgage Lending Discrimination Laws, 26 U. Mich. J. L. Ref. 1 (1993); Disparate Impact Analysis in the Mortgage Lending Context, 115 Banking L.J. 900 (1998); and Application of the Federal Fair Housing Act to Homeowners Insurance, Chapter Two of Insurance Redlining (G Squires, ed., 1997).
• Mr. Blower is a frequent speaker at legal and industry conferences on lending, financial privacy, and consumer protection issues.
• Mr. Colfax is the author of Housing Choice Voucher Discrimination: Another Obstacle to Achieving the Promise of Brown, included in Fifty Years Later: Brown v. Board of Education and Housing Opportunity (The NIMBY Report, September 2004), published by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

To learn more about each of our attorneys, please see their biographies below. To learn more about our cases, both past and current, please visit Our Cases and Cases in the News. To learn more about our Fair Housing work, click here.

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John P. Relman is the founder and director of Relman & Dane. Since 1986, Mr. Relman has represented scores of plaintiffs and public interest organizations in individual and class action discrimination cases in federal court. From 1989 to 1999, Mr. Relman served as project director of the Fair Housing Project at the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. Under his leadership the project achieved national recognition, winning some of the largest housing, lending, and public accommodations discrimination jury verdicts and settlements obtained in the country.

From 1986 to 1989, Mr. Relman worked as a staff attorney at the National Office of the Lawyers' Committee. Prior to joining the Committee, he clerked for the Honorable Sam J. Ervin III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and the Honorable Joyce Hens Green of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Mr. Relman's better-known cases include Timus v. William J. Davis, Inc. ($2.4 million jury verdict for housing discrimination against families with children); Dyson v. Denny's Restaurants ($17.725 million class settlement for racial discrimination against customers); Pugh v. Avis Rent-A-Car ($5.4 class settlement for racial discrimination in the rental of cars); and Gilliam v. Adam's Mark Hotels ($2.1 million class settlement for racial discrimination against guests). Mr. Relman has written and lectured extensively in the areas of fair housing and fair lending law and practice and has provided numerous training classes and seminars for plaintiffs' lawyers, fair housing organizations, the real estate industry, and lending institutions. He is the author of Housing Discrimination Practice Manual, published by the West Group.

Mr. Relman teaches public interest law at Georgetown University Law Center, where he serves as an adjunct professor. He received his law degree from the University of Michigan and undergraduate degree from Harvard. He is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.

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Stephen M. Dane practices civil rights law primarily in the areas of fair housing, insurance redlining, mortgage lending discrimination, equal credit opportunity, and employment discrimination. Prior to joining Relman & Dane, Mr. Dane was a shareholder and served as president of the Ohio litigation firm Cooper & Walinski, representing both plaintiffs and defendants in complex civil litigation throughout the United States.

Mr. Dane's accomplishments have resulted in his receiving a number of awards and honors, including the Public Interest Law Award from Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, the Community Access Award from the Ability Center of Toledo, the Fair Housing Award from the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, the Award of Excellence for the Promotion of Equal Housing Opportunity for All People from the National Fair Housing Alliance, and HUD's Fair Housing Award for Outstanding Contribution and Commitment to Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. In 1998, Mr. Dane was selected as one of eight Lawyers of the Year by Ohio Lawyers Weekly.

Mr. Dane received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics cum laude from The University of Notre Dame in 1978 and received his law degree magna cum laude from The University of Toledo College of Law in 1981. He was the Executive Editor of The University of Toledo Law Review and after graduation from law school served as a law clerk to the Honorable Pierce Lively of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Mr. Dane has served as Chairman of the Catholic Diocese of Toledo's Human Rights Commission and frequently serves as an Acting Judge in the Perrysburg, Ohio Municipal Court. Mr. Dane has been elected to serve as the President of the Toledo Bar Association in 2010-2011. He is admitted to practice in Ohio.

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Michael Allen joined the firm in June 2006, after 21 years of litigation and other advocacy on behalf of poor people and people with disabilities. His practice focuses on litigation under the Fair Housing Act and Americans with Disabilities Act. From 1995 to 2006, he was senior staff attorney and director of the fair housing program at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law and co-director of the Building Better Communities Network. From 1985-1995 he was a staff attorney and managing attorney at Legal Services of Northern Virginia. A nationally recognized expert on the disability provisions of the Fair Housing Act, Michael has litigated and lobbied at the federal and state levels, and appeared in national print and electronic media. He is a 1979 graduate of Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and received his law degree in 1985 from the University of Virginia. He is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and Virginia.

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Bradley H. Blower joined Relman & Dane after serving as Assistant Director/Senior Attorney at the Federal Trade Commission's Division of Financial Practices in the Bureau of Consumer Protection from 1998 to 2004. In addition to managing many of the FTC's landmark lending and financial privacy cases, Mr. Blower was lead attorney on the Capital City Mortgage Corporation litigation, as well as several other lending and privacy initiatives. During his tenure, the FTC took a prominent role in protecting consumers' financial privacy and in enforcing federal consumer protection and credit statutes against predatory lenders.

Prior to joining the Commission, Mr. Blower worked as a senior attorney at the Department of Justice's Commercial Litigation Section (1992-1997) and a litigation associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey (1989-1992). In addition to practicing law, Mr. Blower was a visiting scholar at New Zealand's University of Otago Law School (1997-1998) and a law clerk to the Honorable Orinda D. Evans of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia (1988-1989).

Mr. Blower is a frequent speaker at legal and industry conferences on lending, financial privacy and consumer protection issues. He received his law degree from Duke University and his undergraduate degree with honors from Yale University. He is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and Georgia.

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Scott Chang joined Relman & Dane after several years representing plaintiffs in fair housing and other civil rights cases in California. Before joining Relman & Dane he was a sole practitioner specializing in fair housing cases (1997-2005) and an associate and of counsel with the California fair housing law firm Brancart & Brancart (1993-1997). The cases Mr. Chang litigated include: a precedent setting case establishing that fair housing organizations have standing in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and affirming a large damages award to a fair housing organization which resulted from terminating sanctions for defendants' discovery violations, Fair Housing of Marin v. Combs, 285 F.3d 899 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 1018 (2002); a class action case representing a class of disabled tenants excluded from public housing; and a fair housing and hate crime case involving a group of Asian American Stanford University students who were intimidated based on their national origin when they attempted to rent a house. He is a frequent speaker at national fair housing conferences. Mr. Chang is a graduate of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law and the University of California, Davis. He is admitted to practice in California.

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Reed Colfax joined Relman & Dane after serving as the project director of the Fair Housing Project at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs from 2001 to 2004. As the project director, and in his previous position as a staff attorney with the Committee, Mr. Colfax represented numerous individuals and organizations in housing and public accommodations discrimination cases in federal and state courts. The cases Mr. Colfax litigated while with the Committee included class actions on behalf of African-American visitors to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina during “Black Bike Week,” who were subjected to uniquely oppressive policies and rules by the city and businesses, and a ground-breaking action against the District of Columbia for targeting the city’s predominantly Latino neighborhoods in condemning occupied multi-family apartment buildings.

Prior to joining the Committee, Mr. Colfax was a staff attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., where he litigated fair housing and equal employment opportunity cases throughout the country and advocated before Congress and other federal agencies for stronger anti-discrimination laws and policies. After graduating from Yale Law School in 1996, Mr. Colfax clerked for the Honorable Thelton E. Henderson, United States District Court Judge for the Northern District of California. He is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.

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Katherine Gillespie has experience in a variety of areas of civil rights law, including employment discrimination, police misconduct, and immigrant and women's rights. She has also conducted internal investigations and counseled corporate clients regarding federal government investigations. 

She was a member of the trial team that successfully sued the District of Columbia on behalf of an immigrant of Arab descent whose Fourth Amendment rights were violated when he was assaulted by off-duty D.C. police officers at an area nightclub. Ms. Gillespie has also advocated for the rights of immigrants on several different fronts: representing women subjected to mistreatment by their diplomat employers; filing a lawsuit challenging an anti-immigrant local ordinance; and helping an individual win asylum. 

Prior to joining Relman & Dane, Ms. Gillespie was counsel at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP, where she was a member of the firm’s Investigations & Criminal Litigation and Complex Commercial Litigation groups. She has substantial experience conducting internal investigations and counseling corporate clients regarding federal government investigations. She has advised clients on fraud and federal qui tam issues. She was also a visiting attorney at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs where she worked in the Equal Employment Opportunity Project and the Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project. 

Ms. Gillespie received her law degree, cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center. During law school, Ms. Gillespie won the Bettina E. Pruckmar Memorial Award for her work with the International Women’s Human Right’s Clinic and worked on the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy. After law school, she clerked for the Honorable Mary Schroeder, then Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Ms. Gillespie received her undergraduate degree with honors from the University of Wisconsin. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and Wisconsin. 
 

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Thomas J. Keary came to Relman and Dane from the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice (1985 – 2007). He has significant experience litigating actions to enforce federal laws barring discrimination in the sale, rental, and advertising of housing (including the Fair Housing Act), in lending and credit transactions (including the Equal Credit Opportunity Act), in the design and construction of multifamily housing and commercial facilities with inaccessible features for persons with disabilities (including the Americans With Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act). While at DOJ Mr. Keary litigated a number of significant cases for the United States, including United States v. First National Bank of Gordon, Neb., (brought to halt discrimination in the pricing of loans to the Sioux Indians of Pine Ridge, S.D.); United States v. First National Bank of Vicksburg, Miss., (discrimination in the pricing of loans to African Americans in the Mississippi delta); MCIL and United States v. Richard and Milton Grant Co., (one of the government’s first actions to enforce the provisions of Title VIII for accessible housing); and United States v. City of Chicago Heights, Il., (location of a group home in the City of Chicago Heights).

Prior to his work at DOJ, Mr. Keary was a trial attorney with the Federal Trade Commission, where he developed and litigated case to enforce the credit and antitrust laws. Mr. Keary is a graduate of the George Washington University, National Law Center and Boston College. He is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.

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Jennifer Klar specializes in employment discrimination and police misconduct matters. She currently represents a putative nationwide class of all African-American Special Agents of the United States Secret Service claiming racial discrimination with respect to promotion by the Secret Service. Her other employment matters include sexual harassment and retaliation claims.

Prior to joining the firm in 2004, Ms. Klar was an associate at Hogan & Hartson LLP where as a member of the Community Services Department, she served on the investigation and habeas corpus hearing team in the landmark Tulia, Texas case, which resulted in the release from prison of 12 individuals and full pardons for 35 individuals who were wrongfully convicted based solely on the testimony of an unreliable and racist undercover narcotics task force agent. The legal team, including Ms. Klar, were nominated for Trial Lawyers of the Year by the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice for their efforts on behalf of the Tulia defendants. Subsequently, at the American Civil Liberties Union, Ms. Klar represented Plaintiffs in a civil rights action resulting from a similar round-up of African-American individuals in Hearne, Texas.

Ms. Klar is a 2002 magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School. She received her undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Brown University with honors in English and American Literature and Economics. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.

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Megan Moran-Gates joined Relman & Dane from the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, where she worked in the Employment Discrimination Project as a recipient of Harvard Law School's Irving R. Kaufman Fellowship. While at the Lawyers' Committee, Ms. Moran-Gates engaged in civil rights litigation and administrative agency investigations, and wrote several amicus briefs filed in the United States Supreme Court. Prior to the Lawyers' Committee, Ms. Moran-Gates clerked for the Honorable Morris E. Lasker of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Ms. Moran-Gates graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2006 and received her undergraduate degree magna cum laude in government from Harvard University in 2003. During law school, she worked in the Housing and Civil Enforcement Section of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division and at Greater Boston Legal Services. She is licensed to practice in Massachusetts, New York, and the District of Columbia.

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Glenn Schlactus joined Relman & Dane after six years litigating complex civil cases in federal court at two Washington, D.C. law firms. In his previous work Mr. Schlactus also provided compliance counseling to banks, credit card companies, and mortgage companies on predatory and discriminatory lending issues.

Mr. Schlactus was a Public Interest Law Scholar at Georgetown University Law Center, and after graduation in 1998 clerked for the Honorable Patricia M. Wald of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Before attending law school, Mr. Schlactus spent several years with Public Citizen, where he lobbied Congress and federal agencies on issues of automobile safety and tort law and assisted in the litigation of impact cases affecting the rights of consumers. He is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.

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Sandra M. Wilmore joined Relman & Dane after serving as a Senior Attorney in the Federal Trade Commission's Division of Financial Practices in the Bureau of Consumer Protection from 1972 to 2005. During her tenure at the FTC, she enforced the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and other credit statutes and developed and litigated predatory lending cases against non-bank lenders under the FTC's jurisdiction. She also represented the FTC on the Interagency Task Force on Fair Lending.

Ms. Wilmore received her law degree from Yale University and her undergraduate degree with honors from Fisk University. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and Connecticut.

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Brook Hopkins joins the firm as its 2008-2009 Relman Civil Rights Fellow after clerking for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2007.  While at Harvard, Ms. Hopkins worked at the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center and the ACLU National Legal Department.  She was also a Notes Editor on the Harvard Law Review. 

Prior to law school, Ms. Hopkins worked as a grant-writer for a non-profit human services organization. She received her undergraduate degree magna cum laude in Government and Women's Studies from Smith College in 1998. 

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Materials on this Web site have been prepared by Relman & Dane for informational purposes only and are not legal advice. This information is not intended to create, and receipt of it does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship. Internet subscribers and online readers should not act upon this information without seeking professional counsel. Do not send us confidential information until you speak with one of our attorneys and obtain authorization to send that information to us. Nothing on this site is intended as, and does not constitute, solicitation of any particular client.

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