Cyrus Mehri has led two of the largest race based employment discrimination cases in history. His unique experience guides our practices effort to advance the just treatment of people of all races, a fight that we pursue within the courtroom and without.
Through litigation Mehri & Skalet has worked to correct employment discrimination practices in some of America’s most powerful companies. From Cyrus’ work transforming The Coca-Cola Company to our cases reforming the apprenticeship selection process at Ford Motor Company; M&S has been successful in instituting systemic change in corporate American and providing just compensation to our aggrieved clients.
View our Current Cases and Results pages to read about cases that M&S has litigated.
Madison Avenue Project
At M&S we do not just wait for cases to come to us, when we see discrimination in our society we actively work to correct it. The Madison Avenue Project was born from the realization that discrimination in the advertising industry is widespread with major shortfalls in hiring, pay, and promotions based on race, there are few African American or Latino creative directors in the industry. Since the project began in 2009 Mehri & Skalet has worked with insiders to correct the business practices at some of the ad industries biggest players and filed charges against others with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. By whatever means necessary M&S is dedicated to correcting this disparity.
Bringing Diversity to Sports
The M&S project to bring diversity to sports started with the National Football League. In 2002 Cyrus Mehri and Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. began speaking to the NFL about the apparent limited opportunities for African-Americans to get head coaching or general manager positions. The pair commissioned a report, Black Coaches in the National Football League: Superior Performance, Inferior Opportunities, and ultimately convinced the NFL to institute the ‘Rooney Rule’ requiring every team to interview an African-American if they have a vacancy in one of these positions. A similar push for diversity is now underway in college football.