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 Joseph
Rich
Special Counsel for Federal Agencies and Litigation
Joe Rich, special counsel for Federal Agencies and Litigation, joined the Lawyers’ Committee in 2005. He served as director of the Fair Housing and Community Development Project from 2005 through 2007. During his tenure with the Lawyers’ Committee Mr. Rich has focused on fair housing litigation and legal assistance to victims of Hurricane Katrina on a variety of housing issues.
Before joining the Lawyers’ Committee, Mr. Rich spent his entire legal career in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, where he litigated and supervised hundreds of civil rights cases. From 1999 to 2005, he served as the chief of the Voting Section, where, in 2004, he directed and coordinated the most extensive election monitoring program in the history of the Civil Rights Division, involving coverage of 86 jurisdictions and election monitoring by over 1,000 federal employees. As Voting Section chief, Mr. Rich also was responsible for the coordination of the Department of Justice’s response to the extraordinary events surrounding the 2000 election; preparation and implementation of the Department’s responsibilities concerning redistricting plans after the 2000 Census, including overall responsibility for review of redistricting plans under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA); enforcement of vote dilution and other cases brought under Section 2 of the VRA; and enforcement of the language assistance provisions of the VRA.
Prior to his tenure in the Voting Section, Mr. Rich spent 12 years as deputy chief in the Housing and Civil Enforcement Section of the Civil Rights Division, where he was involved in hundreds of fair housing and fair lending cases and helped to develop and implement the Department’s fair housing and fair lending enforcement program after the passage of the 1988 Fair Housing Amendments Act. Additionally, he served as deputy chief and trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division’s Educational Opportunities Section, where he litigated and supervised approximately 100 school desegregation and other equal education cases.
Mr. Rich received his J.D. degree cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School and his B.A in History from Yale University.
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (LCCRUL), a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, was formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to involve the private bar in providing legal services to address racial discrimination. The principal mission of the Lawyers’ Committee is to secure, through the rule of law, equal justice under law, particularly in the areas of housing, community development, employment, voting, education and environmental justice. For more information about the LCCRUL, visit www.lawyerscommittee.org.
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