Marla Tepper
General Counsel
New York City Department of Consumer Affairs
New York City Department of Consumer Affairs Commissioner Jonathan Mintz appointed Marla Tepper General Counsel in November 2005. Tepper serves as the senior legal advisor to the Commissioner and also oversees the Department’s large-scale litigation. Her strong record of consumer protection and civil rights enforcement on local, state, and federal levels help ensure New York City’s consumers and businesses benefit from a fair and vibrant marketplace.
In addition to her duties as chief legal officer, Tepper oversees the DCA’s Legal Compliance and Fitness and Research and Investigations Divisions which investigate and prosecute cases and engage in policy, regulatory and outreach initiatives. She leads the agency’s major investigations of consumer fraud in debt collection, auto sales, employment offers, home improvement, and more. Tepper also provides counsel to DCA’s Office of Financial Empowerment (OFE). She is also actively engaged in educating consumers and businesses about the law through public forums and seminars. She also taught public policy at NYU’s Wagner School.
Tepper came to DCA after eight years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York where she developed, investigated and prosecuted civil rights cases in housing, lending, employment discrimination, disability, education, nursing home reform, prison reform and voting rights. She won the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division Commendation in 2003 and its Special Achievement Award in 1999. She also taught housing discrimination as an adjunct professor at New York Law School.
From 1984 to 1996, Tepper was a New York State Assistant Attorney General, first in the Litigation Bureau, then in the Civil Rights Bureau, where one of her responsibilities was to lead a state agency task force on affirmative action. In 1989, she was promoted to section chief in the Consumer Frauds and Protection Bureau, supervising staff attorneys as well as continuing to investigate, litigate and negotiate cases in deceptive advertising, health care, predatory lending, insurance and internet fraud, among others. She began her career in the criminal appeals bureau of the Legal Aid Society of New York.
Tepper graduated from Brooklyn College and Georgetown University Law Center. She currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband Charles Downs, and has two sons -- Harlan and Liam.
For more information about the NYC Department of Consumer Affairs and its initiatives, please visit the DCA website at www.nyc.gov/consumers or call 311 (or 212-NEW-YORK from outside New York City).