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EXPERIENCE--

Beth Pepper, a long-time advocate for people with disabilities, has been in private practice since 1994, and established her own office in the heart of downtown Baltimore in January 2001. Her practice encompasses a wide range of civil rights issues: fair housing, employment, public accommodations, education and mental health. Her clients include organizations and providers of services to people with disabilities, families whose children have special needs and individuals with disabilities.

Ms. Pepper has litigated several groundbreaking disability rights cases. She argued the landmark Third Circuit case, Hovsons v. Township of Brick, establishing that the civil rights laws supercede local zoning ordinances as applied to housing for people with disabilities.  As lead trial counsel in Pathways v. Leonardtown, she won an important jury award for her clients, Pathways, a non-profit provider of mental health services, and Ms. Edwards, a client in Pathways’ program, against the town of Leonardtown for excluding a mental health program from a commercial area.  She also successfully sued a fortune 500 company for denying a reasonable accommodation at a job site to a woman who suffered from a mental illness, and, in another employment case, persuaded a jury that Baltimore City had discriminated against one of its employees who suffered from a rare eye disease. In a significant access case, Ms. Pepper helped a fair housing group sue a developer to stop construction of an inaccessible housing development.

Ms. Pepper held a full-time academic appointment at the University of Maryland School of Law during the 1993-1994 academic year, during which time she supervised students in a clinical program and taught trial advocacy and negotiation, as well as housing, guardianship and mental health law.

From 1989 to 1993, Ms. Pepper was a staff attorney and director of the Elders’ Project at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, a public interest law center in Washington, D.C.. She led the organization's fair housing campaign to establish important legal precedents in courts throughout the country.

From 1986 to 1988, Ms. Pepper was an associate attorney in the litigation department of PiperRudnick's Baltimore office. Prior to that, from 1985 to 1986, she was a staff attorney in the civil division of the Maryland Office of the Attorney General.

In the fall of 1983, having just graduated from law school, Ms. Pepper spent the year on London's Chancery Lane, working in the litigation department of Denton, Hall, Burgin, & Warren.

Ms. Pepper lectures and publishes in her practice areas.  Please choose from the following links for examples of her presentations and writings:

SEMINARS --|-- PUBLICATIONS --|--READ THE ARTICLE "CRYING OUT FOR A JUST RESOLUTION"