Kathleen Hoke, JD

Francis King Carey School of Law
Professor
Executive Director, Legal Resource Center for Public Health Policy
Director, Network for Public Health Law-Eastern Region

Professor Hoke developed and teaches the Public Health Law Clinic, engaging Maryland Carey Law students in the work of the Network for Public Health Law (the Network) and the Legal Resource Center for Public Health Policy (LRC). She also teaches Public Health and the Law, introducing students to the legal framework within which the public health system operates.

The Network provides technical legal assistance to national, state, and local public health professionals and their attorneys, legislators, and advocates working to develop sound public policy to improve public health.

Under Hoke’s direction, the Network’s Eastern Region has focused on maternal and reproductive health, cannabis regulation, environmental health, food security, housing stability, and injury prevention. She has conducted research and prepared materials related to regulating the donation of food, expanding access to reproductive health care, and enhancing tenants’ ability to secure safe and affordable housing.

Through LRC, Hoke provides technical legal assistance to Maryland state and local health officials, legislators, and organizations working in tobacco control, injury prevention, and cannabis regulation. Recent work has focused on regulating electronic smoking devices, local government powers in cannabis regulation, and preserving Maryland’s motorcycle helmet requirement.

Hoke worked with a coalition to secure passage of Maryland’s Child Victims Act of 2023 to allow survivors to bring lawsuits against organizations that harbored abusers regardless of when the abuse occurred. She filed an amicus brief on behalf of survivors and legislators in the Supreme Court of Maryland, arguing in favor of the constitutionality of that act.

Hoke received the Jennifer Robbins Award for the Practice of Public Health Law from the American Public Health Association in 2016. She earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Towson University and graduated from Maryland Carey Law in 1992.

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