Karen Coolman Amlong

About Karen Coolman Amlong

I was born on August 26, the anniversary of the day that women won the right to vote. Being politically active and an advocate for women's rights came naturally. A legacy or destiny. I started college with no thought of becoming an employment discrimination lawyer. As an award-winning high-school artist (National First Prize in the "Hallmark Cards High School Talent Search") I won a full scholarship to Michigan State University, from which I graduated ( magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) with an ever-so-useful degree in Art History.

My radicalizing experience for a born-on-the-26th-of-August woman was not so much an epiphany as a reality check: getting passed over for promotion in my first job out of college for a man because "you'll get married, get pregnant and quit." Women in the 70s were supposed to have husbands, babies and homes, not careers.

I sensed that I'd been discriminated against, but didn't know what to do about it. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was only a few years old. Few lawyers brought gender discrimination suits. (The only reason that women had been included in Title VII’s protections was because a segregationist opponent sponsored a floor amendment, thinking that including women would create enough baggage to sink the proposed law.

) Jump forward a few years and I was “married with children.” I attended an organizational meeting for a Fort Lauderdale chapter of the National Organization for Women and its message of equality catapulted me into driving around the state for two years in a 1960 Oldsmobile with two babies in tow to organize NOW chapters.

I ran for and was elected to the NOW National Board of Directors in 1972. I lobbied in Tallahassee for the Equal Rights Amendment in 1973 and 1974. When the ERA didn’t pass, its proponents threatened to run for office. A male legislator told me that "no one like you (a women’s libber)" could ever get elected.

Wrong. I ran and, in 1974 (at age 27), became the first woman from Broward County, Florida, to serve in the Florida House of Representatives. My campaign slogan during that Watergate/watershed year: It's time. One term in the Florida House was enough. I retired from politics and went to law school, graduating and becoming a lawyer in 1979.

In 1982, I married my now-partner and soul mate Bill Amlong (a former Miami Herald reporter I had met while I was in Tallahassee but that's another story). We started our little mom and pop law firm that year, struggling like most small businesses do. Then I did a lot of family law, while Bill did a little bit of everything.

And then Bill started litigating the discrimination cases my NOW colleagues referred to us, which got us started in employment law. We are still a mom and pop law firm, although we have grown far beyond our initial vision. Now we concentrate almost exclusively on cases involving employment rights. Together, Bill and I have tried and settled hundreds of discrimination, sexual harassment and wrongful termination cases.

We've done well. I won Florida's first significant sexual harassment judgment. Stockett v. Tolin, 791 F. Supp. 1536 (S.D. Fla. 1992). Bill won a Supreme Court case that changed the contours of sexual harassment litigation. Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775 (1998). In 2018, we tried and won a case, Igwe v.

City of Miami, in the Top 100 Verdicts in Florida. I have practiced 40 years. I am AV Peer Review Rated through Martindale-Hubbell. I've been a Super Lawyer since 2007. I have lectured extensively on employment law, discrimination and sexual harassment on local, state, national and international levels.

I believe in people being judged on what they can do, not on things they can't change like their gender, their race or their age. I love what I do. Nothing is more satisfying than watching a client who came into my office crushed by losing a job or powerless in the face of workplace discrimination regain their confidence.

I can help you fight back against workplace injustice. I can use what I’ve learned in 40 years of practice to help you get the pay or promotion or severance package you deserve. I can point to the results in cases I’ve tried to help convince your former employer to make a fair settlement without litigation.

And if your case goes to trial, you’ll have the benefit of the thousands of hours I’ve spent in the courtroom, preparing me to try my most important case yet: yours. Think about it.

Contact Karen Coolman Amlong

(954) 289 5786 500 NE 4th St, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301

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