History of the ERC
The Equal Rights Center was founded in 1983 as the Fair Housing Council of Greater Washington by Rev. Dr. Cameron Wells Byrd, Rev. Dr. David Eaton, Rabbi Bruce Kahn, Rev. Msgr. Ralph Kuehner, Rev. James Macdonell, and Rev. Dr. John Peterson, with assistance the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and its Executive Director at the time, Rod Boggs.
“Given the nature of housing discrimination, testing is an important tool for getting evidence to support a complaint of discriminatory treatment, monitoring the defendants’ compliance with court orders and settlement agreements, and identifying discriminatory behavior that can be remedied through conciliation or litigation… Recently, the Committee was able to secure funding to help establish the Fair Housing Council of Greater Washington, an area-wide testing program that will hopefully meet this need and result in a significantly greater level of enforcement.”
– Report on the Washington Lawyers’ Committee’s Fair Housing Project 1975-1983
The ERC’s founders shared a belief that religious leaders of different backgrounds should steer the organization. These leaders united neighbors and civic groups around a shared commitment to justice and provided guidance informed by their faith-based mission to combat systemic inequalities.
“There was a shared sense of a sacred mission of love, fairness, and justice that we all embraced and wanted to see realized in the world.”
– Rabbi Bruce Kahn
The ERC began its effort to archive the organization’s history in 2022, when Rev. Jim Macdonell and Mr. Jim Gibson, two pillars of the ERC’s early years, passed away. Visit our page honoring these two leaders and detailing their contributions to the ERC, local civil rights efforts, and national movements.
The timeline below charts the ERC’s history, highlighting the three organizations that eventually merged to create the ERC in its current form.
“Discrimination must be challenged in every way that it manifests itself. It is morally bankrupt and injures the fabric of society. The merger of these nationally renowned organizations reaffirms each agency’s commitment to civil rights and ensures that we expand the civil rights dialogue utilizing a new and innovative multidisciplinary approach.”
– Rev. Dr. Cameron Wells Byrd
In 1982, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs filed an amicus brief in Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, a Supreme Court case which established the standing of individual testers and testing organizations to sue under the Fair Housing Act. The following year, an interfaith group of community leaders founded the Fair Housing Council of Greater Washington to further equal housing opportunity through testing and outreach. The Fair Housing Council helped expose housing discrimination and used testing to support individual complainants’ experiences. In 1990, the Fair Housing Council won a significant victory in Spann v. Colonial Village, solidifying the standing of fair housing organizations to bring legal actions in their own name.
Following the success of the Fair Housing Council, the Fair Employment Council of Greater Washington was formed in 1990 to apply the same testing methods to workplace investigations. Without Supreme Court precedent affirming tester standing in employment contexts, the Council had to innovate in order to enforce workplace non-discrimination protections. Ultimately, the Council’s matched-pair tests revealed widespread, illegal discrimination in companies’ hiring processes and its “Getting a Job is a Job” program provided D.C. high school students with job-seeking skills.
Shortly after the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law in 1990, the Disability Rights Council of Greater Washington was established to educate the public and enforce the new protections. One of the Council’s most significant victories came in the case of Disability Rights Council v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). The Council and thirteen named plaintiffs sued WMATA alleging violations of the ADA and other civil rights laws; specifically citing failures to provide adequate paratransit services through the MetroAccess program on par with the Metrorail and Metrobus services available to people without disabilities. A settlement reached in 2008 required WMATA to improve its service, adhere to specific performance standards, and monetarily compensate named plaintiffs.
The Fair Housing Council and the Fair Employment Council merged in 1999 to form the Equal Rights Center (ERC), and expanded the organization’s scope to include equal access to public accommodations. In 2005, the ERC merged with the Disability Rights Council, reinforcing the organization’s commitment to combating disability-based discrimination. Since then, the ERC has used civil rights testing to identify and eliminate unlawful and unfair discrimination in its home community of Greater Washington, D.C. and nationwide. As a result of ERC actions, tens of thousands of housing units have been made accessible for people with disabilities, hundreds of properties have revised their policies to comply with fair housing laws, dozens of employers have been exposed for unequal hiring practices, and countless business have made changes to better accommodate customers with disabilities.
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The ERC is a civil rights organization that identifies and seeks to eliminate unlawful and unfair discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations in its home community of Greater Washington DC and nationwide. The ERC’s core strategy for identifying unlawful and unfair discrimination is civil rights testing. When the ERC identifies discrimination, it seeks to eliminate it through the use of testing data to educate the public and business community, support policy advocacy, conduct compliance testing and training, and, if necessary, take enforcement action. For more information, please visit www.equalrightscenter.org
