Randolph M. McLaughlin

Professor Randolph M. McLaughlin, a graduate of Columbia College and Harvard Law School, became Of Counsel to Newman Ferrara LLP in September 2011. Professor McLaughlin is a faculty member at Pace University School of Law, where he teaches courses focusing on civil rights, litigation, labor law, voting rights, civil procedure, and New York practice. Before joining Pace's law faculty in 1988, Professor McLaughlin was associated with Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein, where he specialized in civil litigation and labor law. In 1978, he began his legal career at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a civil-rights/civil-liberties legal organization in New York City. For eight years he worked side by side with the renowned civil-rights attorney William Kunstler. He was responsible for the management and coordination of important cases at both the trial and appellate levels, and pioneered the development of legal strategies to redress racially-motivated violence. In 1982, he won an award of $535,000 for five black women who had been attacked by members of the Chattanooga Ku Klux Klan.

In 1985, Professor McLaughlin represented two civil-rights leaders in a constitutional- tort action against a former United States Senator, a Senate investigator, and a Kentucky prosecutor, in connection with the search and seizure of the plaintiffs' personal papers in violation of the Fourth Amendment. In that case, a federal jury awarded the plaintiffs $1.6 million dollars in compensatory damages. The case was featured in a book by Caroline Kennedy, entitled In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in Action (1981).

On February 20, 1997, Professor McLaughlin won a landmark victory in a voting-rights case against the Town of Hempstead, N.Y., entitled Goosby v. Town Board of the Town of Hempstead, 981 F. Supp. 751 (E.D.N.Y. 1997), aff'd, 180 F.3d 476 (2d. Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 1138 (2000). A federal judge ruled that the town-wide method of electing the Town Council was discriminatory, and ordered that the system be dismantled.

In 1997, Professor McLaughlin represented the family of Charles Campbell, who had been killed during a dispute over a parking space in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. The shooter, an off-duty New York City police officer, was subsequently convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to a prison term of twenty years to life. Professor McLaughlin filed suit against the shooter and his alleged accomplices, and a federal jury eventually awarded the plaintiff $5 million dollars in damages.

In 2007, he intervened on behalf of a Hispanic political activist in a voting-rights lawsuit brought by the United States Department of Justice against the Village of Port Chester, N.Y. On January 17, 2008, the District Court found that the Village's at-large election system violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The court ordered the Village to adopt a cumulative voting system to remedy the violations of federal law.

In addition to his litigation practice, Professor McLaughlin has represented and advised not-for-profit charities in connection with governance and best-practice issues. In 2001, Professor McLaughlin was appointed special counsel to Hale House Center, Inc.--founded in 1969 by Clara "Mother" Hale to provide 24-hour residential care for infants and toddlers who were born to drug addicted mothers who were unable to care for their children. Professor McLaughlin successfully negotiated a resolution of an investigation by the New York State Attorney General into the charity. After a new Board of Directors was appointed, Professor McLaughlin was retained to serve as general counsel to assist in the restructuring of the organization.

Cases & Articles

On December 15, 2011, Randolph M. McLaughlin, Of Counsel, Newman Ferrara LLP, filed an employment discrimination suit on behalf of Warren Glover, a former Director in the National Basketball Association's ("NBA") Security Department. Mr. Glover charged that the NBA discriminated against him as a result of his reporting to management numerous complaints that he had received from female employees alleging that they were subjected to employment discrimination on the basis of gender by supervisors and coworkers. Mr. Glover also alleged that he was retaliated against after he testified in a deposition in a federal employment discrimination case filed by a former female NBA employee who had alleged that the NBA had a pattern of discriminating against women.

• Former N.B.A. Employee Says Sexual Harassment Concerns Were Ignored, Howard Beck
• Suit: NBA fired me for relaying complaints, by Jennifer Pelz (AP)

Publications

• Racially Motivated Violence: Litigation Strategies (1984).
• "The Jury's Role Can't Be Undermined by Media Coverage," (discussing the Casey Anthony and Dominique Strauss-Kahn cases), Journal News, July 7, 2011.
• "The Voting Rights Act and the New and Improved Intent Test: Old Wine in New Bottles," 16 Touro Law Review 943 (2000).
• "Operation Rescue Versus a Woman's Right to Choose: A Conflict without a Federal Remedy ?" 32 Duquesne Law Review 709 (1994).
• "A New Day in South Africa," New York Law Journal, August 23, 1994.
• "Chisom v. Roemer: Where Do We Go from Here ?" 24 Columbia Human Rights Law Review 1 (1993).
• "Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic : The Supreme Court's Next Opportunity to Unsettle Civil Rights Law," 66 Tulane Law Review 1357 (1992).