Roger Severino is the Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Prior to joining the Department, Mr. Severino served as Director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society in the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity at The Heritage Foundation.
Before joining Heritage in 2015, Mr. Severino was a trial attorney for seven years in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division where he enforced the Fair Housing Act, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, and Title II and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
He has litigated cases under sex, race, national origin, religion, disability, and familial status discrimination and served as the Housing and Civil Enforcement Section's E-discovery officer as well as attorney advisor to the fair housing testing program.
Mr. Severino was previously chief operations officer and legal counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
Mr. Severino holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, received a master’s degree in public policy, with highest distinction, from Carnegie Mellon University, and has a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Southern California, where he was a National Merit Scholar.
OCR Mission & Vision
Mission
The mission of the Office for Civil Rights is to improve the health and well-being of people across the nation, to ensure that people have equal access to and the opportunity to participate in and receive services from HHS programs without facing unlawful discrimination, and to protect the privacy and security of health information in accordance with applicable law.
Vision
Through investigations, voluntary dispute resolution, enforcement, technical assistance, policy development and information services, OCR will protect the civil rights of all individuals who are subject to discrimination in health and human services programs and protect the health information privacy rights of consumers.
