The Impact of Technology Regulation on Low-Income Communities: A Comparison Between the US and the EU
This project asks how law can better protect low-income people from harms caused by data-driven technologies. Automated systems are excluding low-income people from opportunities such as education and housing, while targeting them for financial and workplace exploitation. They are also subject to greater surveillance in their homes, neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. In the United States, people often must challenge these systems using outdated legal tools, while the EU has adopted stronger data privacy and AI laws. The project asks what the United States can learn from the European Union’s more robust data privacy and AI laws.
The project compares technology governance in the United States and the European Union, with special attention to Germany and the Netherlands. The project examines not only laws and court decisions, but it also explores the impact of these regimes on low-income people through interviews with lawyers, academics, and civil society organizations working on digital rights and economic justice.
The main output will be a comparative legal study showing which legal tools and advocacy strategies best reduce algorithmic harms to low-income communities.
Main Research Topics
- Technology
- Data Privacy
- Civic Participation
- Poverty Law
- Economic Justice
Curriculum Vitae
- Venable Professor of Law and Director, Civil Advocacy Clinic, University of Baltimore School of Law, 1998-present
- Visiting Professor of Law and Acting Director of the Communications and Technology Law Clinic, Georgetown Law School, 2023-2024
- Faculty Fellow, Data & Society, 2019-2020
- Trial Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, 1997-1998
- Associate, Arnold & Porter, 1994-1996
Publications and Presentations
- Gilman, M. E. (2025). The impact of proptech and the datafication of real estate on the human right to housing. Georgetown Law Technology Review, 9, 444.
- Gilman, M. E. (2022). Beyond window dressing: Public participation for marginalized communities in the datafied society. Fordham Law Review, 91, 503.
- Gilman, M. E. (2022). Expanding civil rights to combat digital discrimination on the basis of poverty. SMU Law Review, 75, 571.
- Gilman, M. E. (2020). Five privacy principles (from the GDPR) the United States should adopt to advance economic justice. Arizona State Law Journal, 52, 368.
- Gilman, M. E. (2020). Poverty lawgorithms: A poverty lawyer’s guide to fighting the harms of automated decision-making on low-income communities. Data & Society Research Institute.
