Matthew J. Owens

Matthew Owens joined Miner, Barnhill & Galland following judicial clerkships with a federal district judge and a federal appellate judge. He has represented plaintiffs in civil rights, consumer protection, wage and hour, and environmental justice cases, including:

• A disparate-impact case alleging race discrimination in property tax assessment;
• A wage-and-hour class action alleging minimum wage violations by a private detention facility;
• Race and sex discrimination cases on behalf of individual plaintiffs; and
• Environmental class actions to protect people and their property from corporate polluters.

Matt is a graduate of Stanford Law School. During law school, he worked at a pro bono legal clinic, where he defended tenants from unlawful evictions and recovered unpaid wages for workers, including a class action to compensate more than 2,400 janitors for minimum wage violations. Outside of his work at the clinic, Matt served as a senior editor for the Stanford Law Review and provided research assistance for a poverty law textbook.

Between college and law school, Matt worked at the State Department’s anti-human trafficking office, which leads the U.S. government’s international efforts to combat modern slavery. Matt graduated summa cum laude from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in philosophy and political science.