Update: PRF Law Adds Three Experienced Civil Rights Lawyers, Opens NYC Office, and Describes Accomplishments Over the Firm’s Initial Year and a Half
We’re happy to share the exciting news about the expansion of Peter Romer-Friedman Law PLLC and provide an update on some accomplishments and victories for our clients, our firm, and our co-counsel over PRF Law’s first year and a half.
Several talented and experienced attorneys recently joined PRF Law—David Berman as a Partner, former EEOC General Counsel David Lopez as Of Counsel, and Rachael Yocum as Of Counsel—and in September 2024 we opened an office in New York City.
In September, David Berman joined PRF Law as a Principal and Head of the firm’s New York City office. David is an accomplished civil rights lawyer who has spent most of his career at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel, a nationally-recognized public interest law firm that focuses on civil rights and criminal justice. At Emery Celli, David represented clients across a diverse range of public interest issues, including law enforcement misconduct, fair housing, employment discrimination, and the protection of children and persons with disabilities. Most notably, David helped to obtain a $17.5 million settlement in the largest wrongful conviction settlement in New York City history for a man who spent 24 years in prison and faced the death penalty for a double homicide he did not commit, to negotiate the first major settlement over digital bias with Facebook, and won a bench trial in federal court challenging a landlord’s disability and source-of-income discrimination. In the year prior to joining the firm, David also helped to grow the impact litigation practice at BraunHagey & Borden, a leading litigation and trial boutique. After graduating from Stanford Law in 2015, David clerked for Eastern District of New York Judge Allyne R. Ross and Third Circuit Judge Cheryl Ann Krause.
In June, David Lopez joined PRF Law as Of Counsel. David was the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s longest serving General Counsel (2010-2016) where he led the litigation program for the nation’s primary administrative agency charged with enforcing federal employment anti-discrimination laws and oversaw a staff of over 325 people. After leaving the EEOC, David joined Peter Romer-Friedman in opening a D.C. office for Outten & Golden, one of the top workers’ rights law firms, and then served as Co-Dean at Rutgers Law, where he is now a University Professor. Earlier in his career, David was a senior trial attorney at the Department of Justice’s Employment Litigation Section and a trial attorney at the EEOC where he successfully tried a number of anti-discrimination cases. A graduate of Harvard Law School, David has taught at the law schools of Harvard, Yale, Arizona State, New York University, Georgetown, and George Washington.
In October, Rachael Yocum joined PRF Law as Of Counsel. Rachael has many years of experience in civil and appellate litigation and is currently Of Counsel to Schnapper-Casteras PLLC, an innovative public interest appellate firm, where Rachael regularly drafts briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court and appellate courts. After graduating from Columbia Law School in 2004, where she was a Harlan Fisk Stone Scholar, Rachael worked at several law firms in NYC and D.C., where she worked on a range of issues, including privacy, fraud, securities, and intellectual property. Rachael has worked for some of the marquee public interest institutions in D.C., serving in the general counsel’s office of the Public Defender Service of the District of Columbia and as a fair housing attorney at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs. She also worked as a lawyer for the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility.
Since opening PRF Law in March 2023 we and our clients have accomplished some tremendous things. Many of these successeswere achieved in partnership with our co-counsel from some exceptional law firms and non-profit organizations identified below. In the past year and a half:
We’ve helped dozens of clients navigate individual workplace disputes regarding discrimination based on race, sex, sexual orientation, disability, age, military service, family responsibilities, as well as retaliation and other protected grounds.
We and our client REAL Women in Trucking filed an EEOC class action charge against Stevens Transport, shining a bright light on how major trucking companies often refuse to hire women because they won’t let women train with men. We also represented REAL Women in Trucking in challenging discriminatory algorithms that unlawfully steer digital job ads away from women and older people.
We sued the VA for denying IVF benefits to lesbian women and convinced the VA to change its policy to stop that discrimination. The case later settled with our client being reimbursed for the denial of IVF benefits.
We filed a class action against New York City for denying IVF benefits to gay male employees, drawing national and international attention to how employers often deny gay men the IVF benefits they need to grow their families biologically. The firm’s client, Corey Briskin, and PRF Law’s founder Peter Romer-Friedman testified about the case before the New York City Council.
We settled a high-profile defamation case with the Daily Caller and a former Daily Caller reporter in an action alleging that five former House of Representatives IT staffers were defamed by a book published by Salem MediaCorp. In the same case, we defeated an anti-SLAPP motion attacking the defamation claim and successfully defended that victory on appeal in the D.C. Court of Appeals. We are now headed towards trial against Salem Media.
We settled USERRA class actions in which FedEx and Alaska Airlines agreed to pay millions of dollars to military reservists who were denied pay during short-term military leaves. And in a case involving similar claims against American Airlines, we won a reversal of summary judgment on liability from the Third Circuit.
We sued NYC’s Taxi and Limousine Commission for racially profiling drivers of color to manufacture $1,500 fines for alleged “street hail” violations, and we defeated NYC’s motion to dismiss our clients’ Equal Protection and Excessive Fines Clause claims.
We filed a class action lawsuit alleging that Amazon unlawfully collected biometric information of customers in Amazon Go stores in NYC, and we defeated in part Amazon’s motion to dismiss.
We filed an age discrimination class action lawsuit against Raytheon, one of the largest defense contractors in America, alleging that the company discriminates against older workers by limiting many positions to recent college graduates.
We sued Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) for rehiring a dangerous former employee who Meta knew had sexually harassed and stalked our client for a year, leading to even more harassment and stalking of our client.
We filed a class action charge against TikTok for retaliating against Black workers who complained about racial discrimination.
We sued the Washington Nationals for age discrimination in public accommodations, challenging the team’s “Millennial Ticket Discount” that gave a 30% discount to 21 to 39-year-olds without providing a similar discount for people 40 or older, including seniors.
We resolved a dispute with Target on behalf of the Communications Workers of America over the allegation that Target published job ads on a social media platform in 2017 that were directed to younger workers with certain age ranges only, and not to older workers.
We are grateful for the amazing clients and co-counsel we’ve worked with to accomplish these things. Our work to advance social and economic justice was a product of all of our hard and thoughtful work, and this work builds on the shoulders of giants who enacted our nation’s civil rights laws and set landmark precedents under those laws. Of course, none of this work would be possible without the clients who have the courage to fight for what they believe is right and to make our country a better and more equal place.