Chris

Certified Tutor

I am the Legal Director of the Strong Children Wellness Medical Legal Partnership, and a New York licensed attorney and Special Professor of Law at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, where I presently teach Bioethics and the Law, Public Health Law, Policy and Ethics, and The ADA: Statutory Interpretation (a course I developed for the law school) in the online LLM/MA program. I also lecture worldwide on disability law and anti-discrimination advocacy, and practice in these areas, immigration law, public benefits, and general and special education law. I am an appointed member of the Adult Ethics Committee in the Division of Medical Ethics at Northwell Health, one of the nation's largest healthcare systems. Additionally, I hold an appointment as a Research Fellow at the Center for Policy Research at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, SUNY Albany, where I research and lecture on general public consciousness of Constitutional rights, and on issues of subordinated identity and the law. In 2014, the President of the New York State Bar Association appointed me to serve on the State Bar Committee on Disability Rights. In that capacity, I am one of the chief advisers to the Bar on such matters. I have also worked with the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund in New York, working on legal name-change cases and on anti-discrimination litigation, mostly involving health insurance refusals to cover gender confirmation surgery for transgender clients. A nationally recognized authority on intersections between disability and LGBT law, I have consulted pro bono for the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund, advising on test case litigation and leading a strategy seminar on this topic for all of Lambda's offices is committed to civic education for all young people. In that spirit, I was appointed in 2016 to the New York State Bar Committee on Law, Youth and Citizenship and its Mock Trial Committee, where I co-wrote that year's high school mock trial tournament problem, Robin Berkman v. County of Dover. Additionally, I lecture on the Constitution and other civic and historical topics to elementary through high school-aged students. I have a passion for history, government, politics and law, and for helping students achieve their goals.