Relman Colfax is pleased to announce that Zoila Hinson became a partner in the Firm on July 1, 2024.
Since joining the Firm in 2021, Zoila has established herself as a leading fair housing and civil rights litigator, obtaining a number of victories and settlements in cases involving fair lending, redlining, housing discrimination, and the False Claims Act.
Zoila represented members of the Black, Gullah Geechee community on Sapelo Island, Georgia, as part of the team challenging public service discrimination there in Drayton et al. v. McIntosh County. As part of that team, she achieved ground-breaking settlements with the State and the County, ensuring improved services for the Gullah Geechee community. Earlier this year, Zoila was part of the team that achieved one of the largest private redlining settlements in history. The settlement directs funds to grants, downpayment assistance, fee waivers, and other activities in redlined communities.
Zoila has significant amicus experience as well, most recently authoring an amicus brief on behalf of the National Fair Housing Association and several fair housing organizations in Connecticut Fair Housing Center v. Corelogic Rental Property Solutions, LLC, a case challenging that a particular rental screening software discriminates on the basis of race in violation of the Fair Housing Act.
Currently, Zoila represents fair housing organizations and the Asian Real Estate Association of America in National Fair Housing Alliance et al. v. Kelly, a challenge to a Florida law that restricts the ability of people from China and six other targeted countries to purchase homes in the state. She is also part of the team in Ochoa et al. v. D.R. Horton, Inc., which alleges that a home builder is violating the Fair Housing Act by failing to modify its homes during the construction process to accommodate purchasers’ disabilities.
Zoila graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. As a member of the Harvard Human Rights Clinic, she travelled to the Philippines, Liberia, and Sierra Leone to investigate human rights violations, including gender-based violence and violations of reproductive rights. After law school, she served as a law clerk to Judge Carlos F. Lucero on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and as a Fulbright Scholar in Namibia, where she studied access to justice challenges. Prior to joining the firm, she spent over five years litigating False Claims Act cases on behalf of the federal government.