The plaintiffs are represented by the law firms of Tin Fulton Walker & Owen and Arnold & Porter LLP and the following lead attorneys:
S. Luke Largess
Luke Largess joined Tin Fulton Walker & Owen in 2009 after 18 years as a partner at Ferguson Stein Chambers Gresham & Sumter. One of eight children in a Navy family, Luke graduated cum laude from Duke University and worked as a teacher, social worker and carpenter before entering law school at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he graduated in 1990. While at Chapel Hill, Luke was inducted into the Davis Honor Society and the University’s Order of the Golden Fleece. He received the Student Pro Bono Award from the North Carolina State Bar for helping start the North Carolina Legal Education Assistance Foundation (NC LEAF), the nation’s first state-wide, loan-forgiveness program to assist lawyers engaged in public service with servicing school debt. Luke also served as an observer at the 1990 elections in Nicaragua. Luke’s practice includes
trial and appellate work in state and federal courts in education, employment, civil rights, criminal defense, personal injury and medical negligence. He has secured large jury verdicts in Title VII retaliation and defamation lawsuits, as well as significant confidential settlements in police misconduct and medical malpractice cases.
Luke represented the class of black families in Belk v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, the progeny of the historic Charlotte school desegregation case originally known as Swann v. Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education.
Luke has also represented schoolteachers since 1990, including members of the North Carolina Association of Educators. Recently, Luke represented a former teacher who was awarded over $1.1 million by a federal jury which found the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools violated his Due Process rights. After the trial, Luke observed that the jury’s verdict should help “the school system to appreciate the personal pressure that people are under when they’re accused [of wrongdoing],” and stressed that teachers “should be supported and not just treated as the enemy.”
Luke is married to journalist Elizabeth Leland, a recent recipient of the prestigious Thomas Wolfe award. He has served on the board and legal committee of the ACLU of North Carolina and the North Carolina Justice Center.
Luke remains involved as board president of NCLEAF which today provides over $750,000 in assistance annually to public service lawyers.
Jacob H. Sussman
Born and raised in New York City, Jake received his law degree from New York University School of Law in 2002, where he was a Root-Tilden-Kern Public Interest Scholar. Following law school, Jake clerked for the Honorable Ellen B. Burns, United States District Judge for the District of Connecticut. Jake then moved to North Carolina and practiced with Ferguson Stein Chambers Gresham & Sumter before joining Tin Fulton Walker & Owen in 2011.
Jake’s practice primarily focuses on criminal defense in federal and state courts. He handles all manner of cases, from “white collar” crimes to drug conspiracies to violent felonies, and at all stages of litigation, including pre-indictment, trial, or appeal. Jake represents clients throughout the State of North Carolina and its three federal district courts. He also represents licensed professionals, including other lawyers, on ethics and disciplinary matters before the State Bar, and has represented clients in regulatory proceedings involving the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC).
Jake has also represented clients in other states, including a defendant in a high-profile capital murder trial in Fulton County, Georgia, and multiple plaintiffs in a federal race discrimination lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the district of South Carolina.
In addition to his criminal practice, Jake handles civil rights and law enforcement misconduct cases. In this area, Jake has represented individuals in claims against federal, state, and local governments, and has litigated federal and state constitutional actions, as well as state tort actions for intentional or negligent conduct.
Jake has been selected by his peers to be included in The Best Lawyers in America, Super Lawyers, and the “Legal Elite” by Business North Carolina.
Before entering law school, Jake worked as an investigator on death penalty cases in Alabama, Georgia and California. During law school, he clerked with the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., the Bronx Defenders, and the Juvenile Rights Division of the Legal Aid Society, where he represented youth in juvenile delinquency proceedings.
John W. Gresham
John Gresham began his law practice in Charlotte in 1976 following two years of service as a law clerk for United States District Court Judge James B. McMillan in Charlotte. Gresham, as he is known to both colleagues and clients, was a partner with Ferguson Stein Chambers Gresham &
Sumter until joining Tin Fulton Walker & Owen in 2011. Gresham’s practice focuses on employment and labor litigation, public employee rights, constitutional law, personal injury, and general civil litigation. Gresham has devoted a significant part of his career representing public school teachers and UNC employees. He has been listed in Best Lawyers in America for a decade in the areas of First Amendment and employment litigation, and as a Super Lawyer and Legal Elite by Business North Carolina in employment litigation and labor law. He continues to hold the AV®Preeminent rating from Martindale–Hubbell, first awarded over twenty years ago.
Gresham graduated from Davidson College and Boston University School of Law, where he won the Bigelow Prize for greatest potential for scholarship and teaching, and published a note in the Boston University Law Review on the employment rights of veterans. He has taught employment law and civil rights litigation at the Vermont Law School and Campbell Law School.
Well known for his trial skills, Gresham has also argued and won influential appellate cases in the areas of constitutional rights and labor relations. For example, in Corum v. University of North Carolina, the North Carolina Supreme Court found that an individual remedy exists under the North Carolina State Constitution for a violation of state constitutional rights. In Reed v. United Transportation Union, the United States Supreme Court expanded the time period in which union members could sue for violation of their rights.
Gresham has served as President of the Mecklenburg County Bar Foundation and as a member of the Mecklenburg County Bar Board of Directors. He has served on numerous bar committees, including the Appellate Rules Study Committee and the Mecklenburg County Grievance Committee. Gresham has also served as Vice Chairman of the North Carolina Bar Association’s Education Law Section, and received that Section’s Distinguished Service Award in 2006.
Outside of his practice, Gresham has served as the president of the Dilworth Community Development Association, as a member of the Board of Dance Charlotte, and as a board member for the Council for Children’s Rights. For a number of years he also coached teams in Dilworth Little League and Charlotte Junior Soccer.
Mark J. Kleinschmidt
Mark Kleinschmidt joined the firm in 2012 after serving six years as the Executive Director of the Fair Trial Initiative in Durham where he represented inmates on North Carolina’s death row and recruited and trained young attorneys to become capital trial lawyers. Prior to leading the Fair Trial Initiative, Mark spent six years as a staff attorney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation.
Mark’s work representing exonerated North Carolina death row inmate Levon Jones is featured in John Temple’s book, The Last Lawyer. He is a regular faculty member at the National Institute for Trial Advocacy Southeastern Regional Program. Mark also formerly served on the Board of Directors for the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, acting as President from 2008 to 2009.
Prior to entering the legal profession, Mark served as a high school teacher at West Mecklenburg High School in Charlotte, where he was named Teacher of the Year in 1997.
After 8 years of service on the Chapel Hill Town Council, Mark was elected Mayor of Chapel Hill in 2009, and re-elected in 2011.
Jonathan Martel
Jonathan Martel concentrates his practice on Clean Air Act and related matters, including regulatory and compliance counseling, participation in EPA rulemaking activities, government and citizen enforcement actions, appellate litigation challenges to rules, and other litigation matters. Mr. Martel’s recent work includes representation of electric utilities, consumer products, automotive, railroad, nonroad equipment, stored energy, fuel and other diversified manufacturers. He appears regularly before U.S. EPA, the various EPA regional offices, and various state 
agencies, including the California Air Resources Board and California Air Quality Management Districts. He served for several years in the Office of General Counsel of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). While at the EPA, he was involved primarily in the implementation of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.
Mr. Martel has been an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, where he taught courses on the Clean Air Act and environmental law, and speaks widely at professional conferences and law schools, including the University of Chicago Law School, the University of Michigan Law School, Vanderbilt Law School, and Villanova Law School. He has contributed the Clean Air Act chapter to the American Bar Association’s 2007 book Global Climate Change and US Law, a chapter on the fuels provisions of the Clean Air Act for the American Bar Association’s Handbook for the Clean Air Act, and the transportation chapter for the 2011 American Bar Association book, The Law of Clean Energy.
Mr. Martel is a graduate of Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. Mr. Martel served as a law clerk for Chief Judge Levin H. Campbell on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit from 1990-1991.
“Arnold & Porter is proud to be representing faiths, clergy and couples in their fight for marriage equality. I entered law school the year that the Supreme Court decided Bowers v. Hardwick, upholding Georgia’s criminal ban on homosexual acts. We have come a long way since that time. As Thomas Jefferson said, ‘Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.’ It is time for equality in North Carolina.” –Jonathan Martel
Sean Morris
Sean Morris represents clients in complex commercial litigation, with particular emphasis on intellectual property and technology, unfair business practices, and consumer protection matters. Mr. Morris has served as lead counsel in several multidistrict litigations, class actions, and disputes involving multiple international parties. He also serves as the head of the hiring committee for the Los Angeles office. 
Among his significant cases, Mr. Morris tried a groundbreaking case in which cities and counties in California asserted that former manufacturers of lead pigment should be held liable under public nuisance law for the alleged health hazard created by the existence of lead paint on private residences. He also serves as lead counsel in an MDL class action proceeding in which plaintiffs in over 25 states allege fraud and violation of state unfair business practice statutes arising from the technology used in the retail sale of gasoline, and he obtained an injunction against an Internet portal requiring it to cease infringements on its network of more than 300,000 websites.
David Weiner
David Weiner is a Partner in the firm’s Business Litigation group in the Washington, DC office. Mr. Weiner’s practice focuses on complex commercial litigation in federal and state courts where he has worked on a variety of matters involving constitutional, administrative, products liability and contract law. He has significant experience with class actions and mass actions in multiple industries and enforcing arbitration and forum selection clauses.
Before entering private practice, Mr. Weiner served as an attorney-advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice (DOJ) where he advised the Attorney General on constitutional and administrative law matters. Additionally, he was a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General at DOJ.
Upon graduating from Stanford Law School, Mr. Weiner served as a law clerk for the Honorable David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and to the Honorable David Levi of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California. While in law school, he served as President of the Stanford Law Review and won the Stanford Kirkwood Moot Court competition.
Samuel Witten
Samuel Witten has an extensive background in international law, the development and implementation of corporate compliance programs, international dispute settlement, and international law enforcement cooperation. Before joining Arnold & Porter, he served in the U.S. Department of State for 22 years, including 19 years in the Office of the Legal Adviser where he was Deputy Legal Adviser from 2001-2007. He also held several senior foreign policy positions, including Acting Assistant Secretary of State, where he managed the State Department’s international refugee assistance programs and the resettlement of refugees into the United States.
Mr. Witten helps companies develop and implement compliance programs and corrective actions related to the Foreign Corruption Practices Act and other anti-corruption legislation. He has supervised compliance reviews under the International Trafficking in Arms Regulations (ITAR). He advises companies on issues of corporate social responsibility. He also represents domestic and international clients in litigation and arbitrations and in domestic enforcement and regulatory matters. His practice also includes economic sanctions and issues relating to international law enforcement cooperation and public international law.
Mr. Witten is on the Board of Governors of the Washington Foreign Law Society, a nonprofit group that advances the understanding of international law and foreign affairs, and served as its President from 2010-2013. He sits on the Board of Directors of the Women’s Refugee Commission and the Board of Advocates of Human Right First.
Sarah Warlick
Sarah Warlick is an Associate in the Washington, DC office of Arnold & Porter LLP, where her practice focuses on complex commercial litigation and internal investigations. Ms. Warlick also has extensive experience with e-discovery matters and maintains a diverse pro bono practice, including cases involving reproductive rights, adoptions, and the death penalty.
Before joining Arnold & Porter, Ms. Warlick was an associate at another international law firm and served as a Special Assistant Attorney General with the District of Columbia office of the Attorney General.
Ms. Warlick graduated cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was a member of the Georgetown Immigration Law Journal. She also participated in the Center for Applied Legal Studies, served as Co-Chair of the Equal Justice Foundation, and was a member of the Faculty Appointments Committee.
Tom Glazer
Tom Glazer is an associate in the firm’s environmental practice group. Mr. Glazer’s practice focuses primarily on environmental litigation, enforcement matters, and regulatory compliance.
Mr. Glazer has litigation experience under numerous environmental statutes including the Clean Water Act, the Oil Pollution Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).
Mr. Glazer also has experience advising clients on a variety of compliance and enforcement matters. Currently, Mr. Glazer represents BP as part of a team of attorneys in the litigation brought by the United States, citizen and environmental groups, states, and foreign states arising from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Mr. Glazer has also been deeply involved with voting rights issues. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Glazer served as a Voting Rights Fellow with a political committee where he developed communications strategy and was part of a litigation team that successfully challenged early voting restrictions in Ohio.
Mr. Glazer joined Arnold & Porter LLP following his clerkship with the Honorable Harry T. Edwards of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He graduated magna cum laude from the New York University School of Law, where he served as an executive editor of the NYU Review of Law and Social Change. Upon graduation, he was selected to the Order of the Coif.