The Barbara McDowell Foundation Launches New Civil Rights Organization

The Barbara McDowell and Gerald S. Hartman Foundation (“Foundation”) announces the launch of its new affiliate, the Barbara McDowell Public Interest Law Center. The Law Center will litigate high impact social justice cases and engage in advocacy and education efforts directed at social justice issues throughout the United States. “With our society beset by manifest inequities affecting so many Americans, the need for an organization broadly supporting social justice is now more pronounced than ever,” said the Foundation’s President, Gerald Hartman. 

The Barbara McDowell Public Interest Law Center will litigate, advocate, and educate on behalf of underserved and underrepresented communities to bridge the widening gap between the rich and the poor and the powerful and the voiceless where in the United States the top .1 percent and the bottom 90 percent hold close to the same amount of wealth.  Through its work, the Law Center will address the discrimination and inequities faced by so-many low-income and disadvantaged persons suffering from the denial and deprivation of their basic civil rights.

The Law Center will act forcefully by identifying areas for litigation having the greatest need for remedial action. These include, among others, rights associated with voting, housing, child protection, disability, environmental justice, refugee and immigrants, healthcare, and Native Americans. The Law Center will augment its litigation efforts by engaging in issue advocacy and educating the public and young persons in schools on civil rights issues and the role that high-impact litigation plays in achieving social justice.

The Law Center has engaged a Litigation Director, Bob Sims, who recently retired as a partner at the international law firm of Latham & Watkins and has extensive pro bono litigation experience. The Law Center will begin hiring additional trial lawyers and staff in the coming months. Litigation efforts will be guided by a Litigation Committee composed of attorneys versed in civil rights and social justice activists.

The Law Center’s Board is comprised of prominent current and retired law firm partners, corporate executives, and civil rights attorneys. Gerald Hartman, the Law Center’s Founder, President, and Chair was formerly a tenured law school professor, a partner at several large law firms, including Drinker Biddle (now Faegre Drinker), and a litigation attorney at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

The Barbara McDowell Public Interest Law Center was established to honor the work and legacy of Barbara McDowell, an exceptional advocate for social justice reforms who had a decorated legal career. Following her untimely death from brain cancer at the age of 56 in January 2009, Barbara’s husband, Gerald Hartman, established the Barbara McDowell Foundation in her name to honor and continue her extraordinary work. 

“The emergence of the Law Center grew out of the success of the Foundation’s Pro Bono High Impact Litigation Project,” Hartman said. Under its auspices, the Foundation has coordinated the initiation of more than 20 high impact social justice litigation cases but did not conduct its own litigation. “It became apparent to the Foundation,” he said, “that its work could be even more impactful through a coordinated approach of an affiliated organization, the Law Center, making its own selection of high impact cases for litigation, engaging in issue advocacy, and conducting civil rights education.”

Since its founding, the Foundation has made 70 grants to 52 social justice organizations in 22 states totaling more than $1.6 million dollars. The Foundation will continue this important work alongside the Law Center’s own litigation, advocacy, and education efforts. Litigation Director Bob Sims emphasized that “the Law Center’s multi-tiered approach to redress national civil rights injustices uniquely positions it amongst social justice organizations.”

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