Heather M. Collins

Attorney Heather Moore Collins is the owner and founder of HMC Civil Rights Law. HMC focuses exclusively on civil rights and employment litigation. HMC Civil Rights carefully selects cases based on merit. After careful case selection, no stone is left unturned during the litigation process. Heather has a particular focus on trial practice, but is a skilled negotiator as well.

Heather has litigated and served as lead trial counsel in civil rights and employment cases in federal and state courts for over twenty years. Her employment practice consists largely of sexual harassment and discrimination cases, but she also has extensive experience litigating cases where her clients have been discriminated against on the basis of race, disability (ADA), religion, age, national origin, citizenship, FMLA status, LGBT status, as well as claims for retaliation, Title IX sex-based discrimination and retaliation, workplace whistle-blowing, wage and overtime claims. Her civil rights practice has a heavy emphasis on sexual violence, including sexual assault and battery, but includes deprivation of civil and constitutional rights under federal and state law due to law enforcement brutality, or governmental negligence or deliberate indifference to a person’s rights.

Ms. Collins is a member of the state bars of Tennessee and Florida. She is admitted to practice in the Middle, Eastern, and Western District Courts of Tennessee; the Southern, Middle, and Northern District Courts of Florida; the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals; and the United States Supreme Court. She has on the Board of the National Employment Lawyers’ Association (NELA) since 2020; she is active on the Tennessee Bar Association (TBA) Labor and Employment Section, including service on its Executive Committee; she has served the Tennessee Employment Lawyers Association (TENNELA) as a Board Member, Vice-president, and President. She is also a member of the Tennessee Trial Lawyers’ Association (TTLA) and the Ranch Club for the Trial Lawyers’ College (TLC). Ms. Collins is regularly asked to speak at legal conferences and for professional organizations about employment law, civil rights law and trial practice.

From 2010 to 2012, Ms. Collins was selected for the Super Lawyers® Rising Stars℠ list in the Mid-South region for Plaintiff’s employment law litigation; and has since regularly been selected Mid-South Super Lawyers® list and the Best Lawyers® list for Employment Law on behalf of Individuals. 

In 2001, Heather worked in the Jacksonville, Florida office of a Washington, D.C.-based litigation firm. In 2007, she established that firm’s Nashville office and practiced there until she founded the Collins Law Firm in Nashville in 2009, CLF evolved into a partnership and now to HMC Civil Rights. Ms. Collins is a third generation attorney and Tennessee native, born and raised in Columbia. She lives with her favorite people and pets in Middle Tennessee. Outside the office, Heather enjoys spending time with family and friends, listening to good music, traveling, enjoying the outdoors, hiking, and roaming the Tennessee River on any kind of watercraft she can get her hands on.