PHILADELPHIA – Stradley Ronon
Partners
Mark Chopko and
Michael O’Mara presented at the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU) Annual Meeting on Feb. 6. The ACCU Annual Meeting gathered senior leaders in Catholic higher education from around the world together in a virtual platform to discuss important matters in their sector, how to strengthen their institutions going forward, and how they should adjust to meet the world's most pressing needs.
Chopko and O’Mara presented the session “The Implications of 2020 Court Rulings on Catholic Institutions,” highlighting the past year’s major court rulings significant to Catholic higher education. The session explained the recent ruling on the ministerial exception and — while it's still developing through new litigation — helped participants better understand it; the decertification of union formation, considering recent court decisions reaffirming Supreme Court precedent, is an active matter on several campuses; and lastly, discussed Title IX and its implications for Catholic colleges and universities.
Chopko chairs the firm’s
nonprofit and religious organizations practice group and advises clients, including colleges and universities, in matters involving structural, business, governance, regulatory and complex litigation. He specializes in defending religious organizations and also teaches a seminar on church-state law at Georgetown University Law Center and is an adjunct in the School of Foreign Service. A former general counsel for the U.S. Conference on Catholic Bishops, he has participated in more than 30 Supreme Court cases as counsel for religious groups in friend-of-the-Court briefs.
O’Mara chair’s the firm’s
litigation department, and experience covers a broad spectrum of commercial litigation, including financial services cases, merger and acquisition disputes, intellectual property litigation, class actions, ERISA claims, trust and estate disputes, and insurance and commercial real estate matters. He frequently represents professional services firms – including Am Law 100 and 200 firms – in professional liability cases. O’Mara also counsels a number of nonprofit organizations, including religious, educational and health care organizations, on a wide variety of litigation-related matters.
About Stradley Ronon
Counseling clients since 1926, Stradley Ronon has helped private and public companies – from small businesses to Fortune 500 corporations – achieve their goals by providing pragmatic, value-driven legal counsel. With offices in seven strategic locations, our responsive team of more than 200 attorneys seamlessly addresses the full spectrum of our clients’ needs, ranging from sophisticated corporate transactions to complex commercial litigation.