Education

J.D., Columbia University

B.A. with Honors, Swarthmore College

Admissions

District of Columbia

Maryland

New York

U.S. District Court: District of Columbia, Maryland

U.S. Court of Appeals: District of Columbia, Fourth Circuit

U. S. Supreme Court

Margaret A. Kohn

Of Counsel

(202) 682-2100

Margy Kohn is an expert in issues related to special education.  She became Of Counsel at the firm in 2020.

Ms. Kohn has a B.A. with Honors from Swarthmore College and was awarded her J.D. from Columbia University in 1972.  Early in her career, she was a staff attorney at the Correctional Association of New York, providing civil legal services for incarcerated individuals in New York City jails, a staff attorney at the Center for Law and Social Policy in the areas of health and women’s rights, and a co-founder of the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC).

At NWLC, she worked toward increased enforcement of Title IX by the U.S. Department of Education to protect students and staff from sex discrimination in education.  While at NWLC, she represented student athletes at Temple University in Philadelphia when they brought a class action over sex discrimination in the University’s intercollegiate athletic program in violation of Title IX and Pennsylvania laws.  The case, which ultimately settled, was one of the early Title IX victories in the United States.

When Ms. Kohn left NWLC in 1985, while consulting on legal issues, she took classes at University of the District of Columbia to become certified to teach elementary school and taught one year at a public school in the District of Columbia.  Since 1988, when she returned to law practice full time, Ms. Kohn has specialized in the representation of children with disabilities. Before operating as a solo practitioner, she was a partner at Kohn & Einstein, a small firm in the District of Columbia where her practice focused on special education and disability rights.

Ms. Kohn has represented parents of children with disabilities in hundreds of cases in the District of Columbia as well as Montgomery, Prince George’s, Charles, Calvert, and Queen Anne’s counties in Maryland.  She has worked for systemic improvements in educational opportunities for children with disabilities in the District of Columbia through these individual representations as well as through her representation of plaintiffs in class actions.  She has provided her expertise as a member of the class counsel team since the beginning of the DL v. District of Columbia class action, advocating for young children to timely receive special education services.  For more information about that case, click here.