NCLEJ’s annual Benefit Awards Dinner will be held next Wednesday, June 7th, at the Lighthouse (Pier 61) at Chelsea Piers. Our illustrious honorees this year include Malini Moorthy, Vice President and Associate General Counsel of Bayer U.S.; Nisha Agarwal, Commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs; and Steven M. Edwards, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. 

This year’s Co-Chairs include Stephen M. Cutler, JPMorgan Chase & Co.; Paul M. Dodyk, Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP (retired); Kenneth R. Feinberg, The Law Offices of Kenneth R. Feinberg, PC; Eva Haller and Dr. Yoel Haller; J. Kevin McCarthy, BNY Mellon; Sara E. Moss, The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.; Charles C. Platt, WilmerHale; and Jennifer and Philippe Selendy, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. 

To learn more, visit our dinner page or click here to purchase tickets.
  Travis England joined NCLEJ as a Staff Attorney this month following seven years of service as a Trial Attorney at the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice. At DOJ, his work focused on enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act and its prohibition of unnecessary segregation of individuals with disabilities. Travis’s work has resulted in expanded access to services for tens of thousands of individuals with disabilities. He was significantly involved in building a number of DOJ’s enforcement actions that have resulted in systemic remedies, including a 2012 settlement that expanded North Carolina’s community-based supported housing program for individuals with serious mental illness. He served as lead counsel for the United States in litigation brought by the federal government and as amicus curiae in a number of lawsuits brought by non-governmental advocacy organizations seeking to protect access to Medicaid.

In addition to his work enforcing the ADA, Travis was a member of the Civil Rights Division’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Working Group, where he supported the federal government’s efforts to combat discrimination affecting LGBTI communities. Travis graduated with honors from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law in 2009, where he served as an Editor of the Washington University Law Review. He was awarded degrees in Political Science and Economics from Saint Louis University in 2006.
 
NCLEJ Staff Attorney Leah Lotto was in Albany last week in support of the SWEAT bill. The bill would fight wage theft by allowing workers to place a lien on the assets of employers who violate labor and employment laws. The bill passed the New York State Assembly last year. NCLEJ is on the steering committee of the SWEAT Coalition, led by low-wage workers and made up of more than 70 grassroots organizations, workers centers, legal service providers, and advocates.
  The President’s recently released budget proposes cruel cuts to all basic safety net programs that help struggling families and individuals. This budget – with more details than the “skinny budget” released two months ago – is an outrageous betrayal of the millions of regular Americans who have been struggling to make ends meet and have been left behind in the economic recovery. With $1.7 trillion in cuts to vital programs over 10 years, Trump will take critical assistance from poor and modest income families and give huge tax cuts to the rich. Read more.
  On May 30th, NCLEJ welcomed three summer interns to our office: Alexandra (Zoni) Rockoff, a returning spring intern, is a first-year law student at City University of New York School of Law; Megan Rue is a second-year law student at the University of Texas School of Law; and Woo Yong Chung is a first year at Yale Law School.