ECBAWM is proud to announce that Diane L. Houk has been elected a firm partner, effective immediately.

A graduate of Columbia Law School, Houk began her career in the 1980’s representing plaintiffs in housing and employment discrimination cases in private practice in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She served as General Counsel to a local fair housing organization during this time.

In 1991, Houk joined the United States Department of Justice in the Housing Section of the Civil Rights Division, where she would ultimately serve for 13 years innovating and litigating to combat housing segregation in communities from coast to coast. In 2000, Diane was named Special Litigation Counsel and, in that role, oversaw the Section’s land use and zoning work in the areas of race, national origin and religious discrimination.

By 2004, Houk was recognized as a national leader in the fair housing movement. She moved to New York City to found the Fair Housing Justice Center which has since grown to become a major force against housing discrimination in the New York City metro.

In 2009, Houk returned to private practice at ECBAWM. She has been central to the firm’s practice, profile, and culture. She has litigated – and won – dozens of landmark cases, including against Facebook, Redfin, and the Town of Eastchester, and continues to pursue cases for individual plaintiffs who face unlawful barriers to housing because of their race, disability, sexual orientation, national origin, and source of income.

“There are thousands of New Yorkers who have Diane Houk to thank for their very homes,” said ECBAWM partner Andrew G. Celli, Jr. “And she has done all this by dint of sheer intellectual firepower, a relentless work ethic, toughness on a heroic scale, endless patience and persistence, and a stubborn and righteous insistence that landlords and their counsel obey the law.”