About Staff and Leadership Legal Services Team
Janice K. Johnson Hunter began her legal career practicing with the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau where she represented hundreds of clients in matters involving public benefits, housing, and consumer law for over 7 years. Ms. Hunter later joined the Maryland Disability Law Center as a managing attorney where she divided her time between management activities and a law practice in special education for over 7 years. During her tenure at MDLC Ms. Hunter served as Deputy Director of Legal Work and also as Interim Director. Her professional experience also includes stints as a public policy advocate with the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty and the Archdiocese of Washington-D.C. Catholic Conference. Joining NDRN in 2007, Ms. Hunter is responsible for supervising the NDRN legal staff and the legally-based technical assistance activities of NDRN and for monitoring the delivery of technical assistance by outside consultants to the P&A network. She also provides direct technical assistance and collaborates with the NDRN Director of Training to develop training programs to meet identified needs of the P&As.
Ron provides training and technical assistance to the P&A/CAP network on special education. He has specialized in disability law, particularly special education, since 1979, when he started his legal career in Buffalo as a VISTA attorney. After that, he was a Clinical Professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School for nine years, supervising the Education Law Clinic. In 1991, Ron moved to Neighborhood Legal Services (NLS) where he represented clients in a wide variety of disability-related cases. As part of NLS's National AT Advocacy Project, Ron also was a frequent author on disability-law-related issues. He was co-chair of the New York State Bar Association's Committee on the Rights of People with Disabilities for four years, and was the President of the Board of Directors of Autistic Services, Inc., in Western New York, for 10 years. Ron earned a B.A. in Psychology from the State University of New York at Binghamton and a J.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School.
Jane Hudson is a Senior Staff Attorney with NDRN. She joined NDRN in 2001 to provide technical assistance and training on employment issues involving individuals with disabilities. In 2004, she became the point person at NDRN on the P&A statutes, P&A access authority, P&A standing, abuse and neglect investigations and the reduction of restraint and seclusion.
The common threads in Jane’s career have involved education, disability issues and law. As a Michigander, she went to Kalamazoo College where she studied psychology and law. She had several internships where she worked with children with disabilities. One was at the Upsal Day School in Philadelphia, which provided educational services and supports to children and youth who were visually and intellectually disabled. Another was at the Toledo Public Schools program for Deaf students. She also was a Junior Year Abroad Student at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, where she studied psychology and had several experiences involving Lebanese youth with disabilities.
After graduating from college, she got a Master’s Degree in Teaching English as a Foreign Language at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. She focused on applied linguistics and was especially interested in pyscholinguistics. She simultaneously taught in the English Language Institute at the University. When she returned to the United States, she was an instructor in the Career English Language Institute at Western Michigan University for seven years, where she taught hundreds of adult international students.
In 1983, Jane went to law school at the University of Toledo. While in law school, she was on law review and moot court, externed for a federal job, worked at the Toledo Legal Aid Society and was a law clerk at Lewis and Roca, a large law firm in Phoenix, Arizona. After law school, she returned to work at Lewis and Roca as an associate and did pro bono work for the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest, which later became the Arizona Center for Disability Law. She later joined the Center as an attorney in the Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness (PAIMI) program and later became the PAIMI Coordinator.
In the mid-1990s, Jane joined the Maricopa County District Attorney’s Office, Civil Division, in Phoenix, Arizona. Her work focused on employment law, including the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. She also worked with the County’s Human Resources Department to set up a “one-stop” case management system for employees with disabilities.
In 2001, Jane moved to Washington, D.C. to join the National Disability Rights Network. She is interested in working with P&As to develop nationwide initiatives to prevent the abuse and neglect of individuals with disabilities and to strengthen the P&A system to ensure that their rights are protected.
David manages the Social Security Administration Employer Representative Payee Review Project, provides training and technical assistance to the P&A/CAP network on employment law and vocational rehabilitation issues, and assists in overseeing training and technical assistance to CAP. David also works on issues related to the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Prior to joining NDRN, David was the PABSS staff attorney at Legal Services of Central New York, and worked on cases under both the CAP and PAIR programs. In these capacities, David dealt with cases involving employment discrimination, vocational rehabilitation, Medicaid, consumer debt, and accessibility including successful litigation and trial experience in federal court. He has also advised clients on various return to work issues such as social security benefits planning, the Ticket to Work program, self-advocacy with the New York State vocational rehabilitation agency, and conducted training programs on employment law and the Ticket to Work program. He has interned with other nonprofit organizations and government agencies including the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. David earned a B.A. from Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., and holds a J.D. and Ph.D. in political science from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Elizabeth provides assistance to Protection and Advocacy Agencies related to community integration, with a focus on Medicaid litigation and the implementation of the Olmstead v. L.C. Supreme Court Decision. Additionally, Elizabeth manages the NDRN contract with the Health Resources Services Administration to provide legal assistance to P&As engged in outreach and advocacy for individuals with traumatic brain injury. Elizabeth is responsible for the NDRN initiative to support and encourage P&A advocacy on behalf of senior citizens with disabilities; and the P&A initiative to promote P&A representation of individuals with disabilities involved with the foster care system. Elizabeth served as legal consultant to the New Freedom Initiative: State Coalitions to Promote Community-Based Care, an initiative of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). In this role, she assisted states and territories in their efforts to promote community integration supports and services for adults and children with mental illnesses. Elizabeth began working formally as a disability advocate in 1986, at United Cerebral Palsy Association and also worked as a researcher at the U.S. Government Accountability Office. She received a Bachelor of Arts from Emory University and a Juris Doctor from the Washington College of Law at American University in Washington, D.C
Amy is the Disability Advocacy Specialist for the Vocational Rehabilitation and Client Assistance Program (CAP). Prior to arriving at NDRN, Amy worked for 7 years at a vocational training facility for individuals with a variety of disabilities in Atlanta, Georgia. She worked primarily with VR clients as both a case manager and as a certified vocational evaluator. More recently, Amy received a law degree from Saint Louis University. She is happy to be returning to NDRN after working here as a law intern in the summer of 2008.
Ms. Scott is responsible for spearheading the efforts of the P&As to ensure election access to individuals with disabilities under the Help American Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) and oversee voting training and technical assistance to the P&A System. Ms. Scott has been with NDRN since 2006 serving as the Project Manager for the Katrina Aid Today program where she worked with state P&As providing case management services to individuals with disabilities impacted by Hurricane Katrina. Delores joined NDRN with over 10 years of experience working with adjudicated youth and providing technical assistance to case managers in obtaining services for their clients with disabilities. She has practiced as a Special Education attorney and has served as an administrative due process hearing officer in the State of Maryland. Ms. Scott received a J.D. from the David A. Clarke School of Law, University of the District of Columbia, and a Graduate Certificate in Homeland Security from George Washington University.
Ken received his undergraduate degree from New York University and his J.D. from Brooklyn Law School. He started his career as a VISTA attorney in Yonkers, NY, in an elder law project and then worked for more than 20 years in civil legal services for low income people in urban and rural programs. He worked at the Broome Legal Assistance Corporation in Binghamton, NY, at Southern Tier Legal Services in Bath, NY, at Monroe County Legal Assistance Corporation in Rochester, NY and most recently at the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau in Riverdale, MD. He has represented many clients with disabilities in disability, housing, and public benefits cases in both individual cases and in impact litigation. His focus here is on ADA Titles I, II, and III, and Fair Housing. Ken is also the key staff person on issues related to Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).
Judie is NDRN's specialist for criminal justice and juvenile justice issues. Before joining NDRN in 2005, she was the Advocate General for the Oklahoma Department of Human Services for six years, managing an office that conducts abuse and neglect investigations in public ICFs/MR and in all juvenile residential facilities, including correctional institutions. Her JD is from the University of Iowa College of Law, where she participated in its Prisoner Assistance Clinic. Her legal career includes: working for the Minnesota Attorney General's Office, where she represented the Minnesota Department of Corrections; working for private law firms in Minnesota and Indiana; Director of the non-profit Louisiana Capital Defense Project; representing people on death row in Louisiana, Indiana and Oklahoma for 13 years; and a solo practice in Indiana focusing on criminal defense and prisoner civil-rights litigation. She earned her BA, MA and PhD (in Spanish and Comparative Literature) from the University of Wisconsin.
Curtis L. Decker, JDCurt Decker has been affiliated with the National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) since its inception in 1982.
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