is a graduate With Highest Distinction of Rutgers College (1974) and a cum laude graduate of Boston College Law School (1977). He is a member of the Illinois Bar, the Washington State Bar, the Northern, Central and Southern Illinois divisions of the United States District Court, and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. He has practiced before the District Courts of the Northern District of Indiana, the District of Columbia, California, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Connecticut. Mr. Taren has litigated hundreds of federal civil rights cases.
Mr. Taren has nationwide recognition as an expert in the area of federal Fair Housing Law having litigated hundreds of cases on behalf of individuals denied housing based upon their race, disability, national origin or family status. Mr. Taren has litigated municipal zoning cases involving the right to locate group homes and Community Integrated Living facilities in residential neighborhoods as well as cases involving the organized opposition to the siting of low and moderate income or mixed income housing. He has been co-class counsel in numerous nationwide lending discrimination class actions and is the co-author of the 2010 Harvard Civil Rights Law Review Article entitled Discretionary Pricing, Mortgage Discrimination and the Fair Housing Act, to be published at 45 Harv. CR-CL Law Rev. No. 2. Mr. Taren is a national lecturer on housing discrimination issues and has served as General Counsel for most of the Chicago Area Fair Housing Centers for more than 25 years.
In the area of employment law, Mr. Taren has successfully represented a nationwide class of African-American FBI agents in a ground breaking employment discrimination case and has extensive litigation experience in the areas of labor and employment law, including race, age, disability and sex discrimination cases, whistleblower litigation, wage and hour cases and executive severance and contract matters. He has successfully litigated one of the first cases under the Genetic Information Discrimination Act. Additionally, Mr. Taren has handled numerous individual and class action arbitration matters.
As an experienced neutral, Mr. Taren serves as an arbitrator on the Midwest and Pacific Northwest Employment Panels of the American Arbitration Association, arbitrating both individual and class action claims. He has also served as a Hearing Officer for the Chicago Human Relations Commission since its formation in 1991, adjudicating cases brought under the Chicago Human Rights Ordinance. As a mediator, Mr. Taren was selected by the Court Appointed Special Master in McReynolds v. Merrill Lynch, to assist in the claims process to distribute the $160,000,000.00 race discrimination settlement.
|
|
|
