John P. Relman

In late 2021, State Street Corporation (State Street) hired Relman Colfax to complete an independent civil rights audit. The audit examined State Street’s business policies, practices, products, and services from a civil rights perspective. The final audit report was published on May 30, 2023.

The Fortune Society, a leading reentry organization, is challenging the exclusionary practices of a New York City-based affordable housing provider with a demonstrated history of banning applicants with a record of criminal legal involvement.

On August 15, 2022, Relman Colfax filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland against real estate appraiser Shane Lanham, real estate appraisal company 20/20 Valuations, LLC, and residential mortgage lender loanDepot.com, LLC, on behalf of Baltimore homeowners Drs. Nathan Connolly and Shani Mott, alleging racial discrimination in a home appraisal.

On October 6, 2021, Relman Colfax filed a lawsuit in Indiana federal court alleging that Old National Bank engaged in lending discrimination in Indianapolis in violation of the Fair Housing Act.

In December 2020, Upstart Network (“Upstart”), the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (“LDF”), and the Student Borrower Protection Center (“SBPC”) entered into an agreement to appoint Relman Colfax to serve as an independent fair lending Monitor to evaluate and make recommendations regarding the fair lending implications of Upstart’s lending platform, and to issue a series of periodic reports on its findings and recommendations.

This Fair Housing Act case challenged a Brooklyn apartment complex's refusal to rent units to formerly incarcerated individuals, under the complex's policy prohibiting anyone with a criminal record from living there, as racially discriminatory.

In 2013, in the first reverse redlining case filed against a for-profit school in the country for engaging in deceptive practices to encourage low-income African-American students to take out large federal student loans for an education that the school knew was inadequate, the firm obtained a $5 million settlement for a class of over 4,000 members. 

Multiple challenges to attempts to prevent construction of affordable, multi-family housing within St. Bernard Parish, New Orleans. After three evidentiary hearings in less than one year, the Court found that the Parish acted with racially discriminatory intent and that its actions had a discriminatory effect on African Americans.  

In 2008, Relman Colfax obtained a $10.8 million jury verdict for 67 plaintiffs challenging the refusal to provide water services to a predominately African-American community by the City of Zanesville and Muskingum County, Ohio.