Brown, Goldstein & Levy is proud to acknowledge Black History Month and pay tribute to the generations of Black Americans who continue to struggle and triumph in the fight for full equality and freedom in the United States.
Our firm has been committed to fighting against racist systems and attitudes since our founding in 1982. Chris Brown and Dan Goldstein pursued this commitment by bringing civil rights litigation, including a series of Voting Rights Act lawsuits that brought the first Black politicians to local elected offices across Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Fair Housing Act cases against landlords that denied apartments to Black tenants, and cases on behalf of children poisoned by lead paint—a persistent and endemic problem in Baltimore that has had long-standing and harmful effects on the Black community.
The fight continues in our work challenging discrimination in housing, employment, and education, demanding law enforcement accountability through civil rights litigation, and seeking justice for those who have been wrongfully convicted.
BGL represented a Black Legal Aid attorney who was detained by a deputy sheriff following a court hearing for “lawyering while black,” a case that received national attention, and won an arbitration award of more than $250,000 on behalf of a Black Hooters server who was fired from her job because of Hooters’ racially discriminatory image policy. We also obtained 4,400 vouchers and mobility counseling, worth over $1 billion, to enable Black families to move from public housing and other segregated areas of Baltimore City to communities of opportunity throughout the Baltimore region. Currently, we represent the National Fair Housing Alliance and fair housing groups across the country in a lawsuit against Bank of America and Safeguard Properties Management, LLC, for maintaining foreclosed-upon homes in white neighborhoods in better condition than those in Black and Latinx neighborhoods.
We are proud to celebrate the invaluable contributions of the Black community to our nation. We vow to continue to uplift Black voices and stand with those demanding an end to structural racism and the pervasive mistreatment of the Black community.