Grover G. Hankins – Has a national trial firm and has for fourteen years litigated multi-plaintiff environmental cases presently throughout the United States, including the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Michigan, Missouri and California. Hankins is formerly the National General Counsel for the NAACP. He headed the litigation for the Association, which included complex school desegregation, voting rights, employment discrimination, and housing discrimination cases. Hankins career spans over 32 years. He has served for five years as a trial attorney with the Department of Justice in the Civil Rights Division Employment Section litigating nationwide class action employment discrimination cases. Subsequently, for six years he prosecuted complex organized crime cases with the Department of Justice Criminal Division Organized Crime and Racketeering Strike Force in Kansas City, Missouri. He then practiced for four years with a small general practice firm where his litigation portfolio included one of the first environmental justice cases in 1982. Hankins left the firm to become National NAACP General Counsel and was later chosen to be the Principal Deputy General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Louis Sullivan. Upon leaving DHHS, Hankins became the Distinguished Visiting Professor at Thurgood Marshall School of Law Texas Southern University. He was invited to stay at TSU where he taught environmental law and headed a nationally acclaimed environmental justice clinic for 10 years.

Hankins is a national lecturer on both civil rights and environmental justice issues and has published numerous articles including: Visiting the Iniquity (Sins) of the Fathers Upon Children: Fashioning a National Template of Affirmative Relief for Workers of Color Presently Suffering the Chemical Effects of Past Discrimination, 2 Rutgers Race and L.Rev. 18, A Smooth Stone for the Sling, 31 Gonz.L.Rev.27, and The Constitutional Implications of Residential Segregation and School Segregation—To Boldly Go Where Few Courts Have Gone, 30 How. L J. 481 (1987).

Presently, Hankins is the managing partner of The Hankins Law Firm in Houston, Texas.