Q&A with Armen H. Merjian ’82

Drawing inspiration from his family’s history, Armen Merjian is a tireless advocate for marginalized communities, including people living with HIV/AIDS and those facing housing discrimination. As a leading civil rights attorney with an unwavering commitment to justice, he has secured landmark legal victories and fought pivotal battles that have advanced equality and human dignity. Though the path to justice is often steep, Merjian’s work has profoundly impacted the lives of his clients and reshaped the civil rights landscape across the nation.

What inspired you to pursue a career in law?
I felt destined to become a lawyer due to my unique personal and familial circumstances. I am the grandson of orphans of the Armenian genocide. From an early age, I not only knew of our history, I was also keenly aware of the history of oppression, marginalization, and injustice. It both angered me and motivated me to want to do something to make other people's lives better. My father, ​​Hagop Merjian [English, College Counseling 1961-1999], had a similar philosophy and initiated a wonderful educational enrichment summer program for disenfranchised Hartford-area Black and Brown students. Many of the participants went on to incredible careers. It inspired me even further to want to make my mark and make a difference.

What drew you to focusing your practice on people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA)?
The HIV and AIDS epidemic disproportionately affected communities already marginalized by society’s prejudices — the LGBTQ community, Haitians, intravenous drug users, and overwhelmingly Black and Brown people. The bias of this new disease further compounded existing prejudices toward this class of marginalized people. While I worked in many different areas of civil rights, PLWHA needed so much assistance in the 80s and 90s, and it was a void I wanted to fill.
 
 

Tell us about your first case.
My first case, New York State Society of Surgeons v. Axelrod, began in the 1980s when a group of surgeons was seeking to compel HIV to be designated as a sexually transmissible disease in a way that would trigger draconian measures, including and up to the quarantining of PLWHA and mandatory name reporting. Quarantining human beings is draconian, ugly, and unnecessary. Name reporting would have driven the whole community of PLWHA underground. It would deter them from testing and learning their status so that they didn't spread the illness or even get treatment that they might need. Every major public health expert in the country joined us as friends of the court, amicus curiae, to plead with the court all the way up to the highest court of New York. We were able to persuade the High Court of New York that it was indeed ill-advised, and we were able to forestall the quarantining of people living with HIV.
 
How did it feel to win?
It was wonderful to use what I had learned to help people, and it was horrible to think that we must fight these kinds of overtures instead of using our time and energy for more productive things. As with all my cases, I am saddened that such battles even need to be fought. These are battles that shouldn't have had to be fought, and many people suffered until we prevailed in these and so many other cases. They are reminders that civil rights struggles happen every day. We tend to think of civil rights struggles in black-and-white films, Martin Luther King, Jr. making his speeches, and things that happened before we were born. The fact is that there are new civil rights struggles all the time.
 

You recently won a lifetime achievement award from the New York Law Journal. What did that mean to you?
First and foremost, it means that I'm old. I never considered that I could be old enough to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award. It also was a recognition of the work that we've done at Housing Works — that was immensely gratifying. It's a prestigious New York Law Journal award usually granted to esteemed older law firm partners who are giants in their field. It was wonderful to see civil rights work receive recognition. I think of it as a recognition of the work and the field more than of myself.
 

Of the landmark civil rights cases you have worked on, which do you feel has had the most significant impact, and why?
There are a couple to choose from. In Hanna v. Turner, New York City failed to fulfill its legal obligation to house homeless PLWHA. They were turning them away and telling them to return the next day. They would close their offices at five, sending PLWHA into snowstorms and sub-freezing temperatures and telling them to make their own arrangements. If they survived on the streets of New York in a blizzard, the City would attempt to arrange housing for them the next day. We won and established that the City was required to house homeless PLWHA on the same day of the request. It was the first such ruling in US history.
 
In Denning v. Barbour, the governor of Mississippi suddenly decided to cap people with Medicaid at no more than five prescription drugs, only two of which could be brand names. Medicaid is actually a revenue generator for Mississippi; for every 23 cents Mississippi spends, the government pumps 77 cents into Mississippi. It was a penny-wise and pound-foolish decision that made no sense and was a death sentence for so many. At the time, an HIV treatment regimen required no fewer than three brand-name drugs. There were essentially no generic HIV drugs. In addition, people with comorbidities can need ten to fifteen — even twenty — drugs a month to treat cancer, impending blindness, seizure disorders, diabetes, and other things. One out of four Mississippians relies on Medicaid to secure treatment and medication and to stay alive, so this decision affected millions in Mississippi. I worked with a national coalition to challenge Governor Haley Barbour’s decision, and we ultimately prevailed with an agreement by the State of Mississippi to waive the brand-name cap for PLWHA and to exceed five prescription drugs upon a doctor's verification of medical need for the additional drugs.
 

You now advocate for those experiencing housing discrimination. What victories have you achieved?
Housing discrimination continues to be a plague on the nation. One of the forms of housing discrimination most rampant in America is source-of-income (SOI) discrimination. Landlords are not taking vouchers and housing subsidies, even though they pay full market rent. Voucher programs have been a wonderful success, as both sides of the political aisle agree. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people who have housing vouchers are either disabled, Black, Brown, or female-headed households. The refusal to take a voucher is often a proxy for a refusal to serve women, People of Color, and those with disabilities. My organization, Housing Works, has achieved many landmark decisions, striking down SOI discrimination and the many different subterfuges landlords now employ to mask that they're refusing to take Black and Brown people who proffer a voucher. We've secured numerous landmark decisions and opened up tens of thousands of units — a critical achievement in the face of widespread homelessness, particularly in New York.
 
How do you maintain hope and motivation while working in this field of inequalities and discrimination?
It's very difficult. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I love King, but I disagree with him. The arc of the universe does not bend. You have to bend it. Others are trying to bend it back the other way. And we've seen that over and over again in our country. It is a Sisyphean struggle. Sisyphus was cursed to roll a boulder up a hill. As soon as he approached the very summit, the boulder would roll back down. He just kept rolling it back up again. Those of us in the civil rights field often feel like Sisyphus. We're moving that boulder up. But some forces are anti-civil rights, trying to push that boulder back down. That's quite disheartening. I maintain hope and strength in the face of these challenges, disappointments, and, frankly, outrageous injustices that I witness every day because I feel that I must and because my clients need me to do so. Many of us in this country are completely unaware of the struggles for civil rights and fundamental human rights. I feel I need to fill that void. My own difficulties and sorrows can’t match what my clients are going through. I need to suck it up, get in there, and fight for them.
 
What can the public do to help fight for civil rights?
There are many things. Most importantly, become politically active and hold your elected officials responsible for the laws that they pass and the acts that they take. The late, great constitutional scholar Charles Black, who was my professor and co-author of the Brown v. Board of Education brief, liked to point out that governments have committed the greatest civil rights violations in US history. Time and again, we witness government actions that abridge the civil rights of Americans. We must hold the government responsible for doing what's right for its citizens. Democracy depends upon an active and educated electorate.
 
There are also a million other ways that people can donate their time, money, and resources to help those who are unhoused, disabled, in need of educational assistance, etc. Sometimes, people are daunted by how much there is to do and think that they can't make a difference. Nonprofits depend upon volunteers, for example, and they make a big difference.
 
What legacy do you hope to leave through your work?
I hope folks can look at my career and understand they can make a difference. It can be frustrating to witness injustices and wonder whether meaningful change is possible. There are millions of people in Mississippi getting their prescription drugs right now. They are treating their cancer and diabetes. There are thousands of New Yorkers living with AIDS every night who are sleeping in medically appropriate emergency housing. There are women who have fled domestic violence who can secure places to sleep and homes for themselves and their children because of the work that my organization has done. I hope that folks will be inspired to understand that civil rights struggles abound and that they can actually make a huge difference in the lives of the individuals they represent. Even if we can't wholesale change everything, we can still change quite a bit.
 

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