The Equal Rights Center (ERC) honored Bates White with the 2024 Impact for Equality award to recognize the firm’s contributions to ERC’s civil rights work. ERC seeks to eliminate unlawful and unfair discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations in the Washington, DC, area and nationwide. The Impact for Equality award recognizes an individual or group whose contributions to the ERC within the past year allowed ERC to maximize the impact of its work.
In 2023, Bates White teams that included Amar Adusumilli, Julian Chan, Amanda Kurzendoerfer, Manush Mobarhan, and Catherine Tang worked on several projects on a pro bono basis to gather and synthesize data, submitting a report to the court in ERC’s source-of-income discrimination case against Adams Investment Group. ERC found this information useful in its efforts to hold accountable several housing providers in the DC region whose policies perpetuate racial segregation.
Kate Scott, ERC’s Executive Director, said that having access to the type of analysis Bates White provided “emboldens us to further advance our mission.” Since Bates White’s work, ERC been able to use the same theory to bring several more cases in the District against housing providers engaging in source-of-income discrimination.