Michael Hanley

Senior Staff Attorney

Michael Hanley is a senior staff attorney with the CHCCD Unit (Consumer, Housing, C.A.S.H. and Community Development) in Empire Justice Center’s Rochester Office.  His work focuses on systemic discrimination in state and federal low-income housing programs, and on other forms of racial disparities and the denial of equal access to housing opportunities for minority children, including disparities in health risks related to housing segregation and neighborhood environmental justice issues.  

Mike Hanley has been with the Empire Justice Center since 1982, and has been a practicing civil rights and housing attorney since 1975. He was instrumental in the formulation of a major federal lawsuit, Comer v. Kemp, which successfully challenged racial segregation in federal housing programs (public housing and Section 8) in Buffalo, and Erie County which became a model for similar litigation.

From 2007 to 2009 Mike was Co-Chair of the Public Interest Committee of the Real Property Law Section of the New York State Bar Association, and he is past Chair of the New York State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has written several publications analyzing the civil rights disparities in housing, including most an article in the January/February 2008 issue of “Poverty and Race” (Vol. 17, No. 1), analyzing the extent to which minority children in New York State are at much greater risk of being poisoned, and permanently injured, by lead-paint hazards.

While Co-chair of the Housing Committee of Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning in Rochester, he was instrumental in the drafting the Coalition’s proposed local ordinance that was a critical part of the adoption process for that city’s Lead Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Act which went into effect in 2006. He was also involved, as a member of the Coalition to Eliminate Lead Poisoning in New York State, in the drafting of comprehensive statewide lead-paint legislation.  Although that legislation was vetoed due state budget issues after nearly unanimous passage by both houses of the state legislature, it nevertheless triggered new commitments, programs and initiatives by the state.

Practice Area(s):
Housing, Civil Rights