Johanna Soris

Johanna SorisJohanna Soris recently retired from the Office of the Attorney General’s Nonprofit Organizations/Public Charities Division. Johanna was an Assistant Attorney General under the administrations of Francis X. Bellotti, James Shannon, Scott Harshbarger, Thomas Reilly, and Martha Coakley.

During her thirty years with the Attorney General’s office Johanna handled every aspect of the laws governing charitable corporations and charitable trusts doing business in Massachusetts. Early in her career she defended the constitutionality of the Massachusetts Charitable Solicitation Act under the first amendment in the First Circuit Court. She also worked on complex corporate transactions involving charitable acute care hospital sales to national for-profit hospital chains, a legal phenomenon which started in the 1990s. Johanna worked closely with former Access to Justice Fellow, Richard Allen, to develop a paradigm to analyze these early hospital cases to assure that the transactions were fairly priced and free of conflict of interest.

Johanna conceptualized, researched, and drafted the Attorney General’s Guide for Board Members of Charitable Organizations. Other educational highlights include co-responsibility for a Kellogg Grant for Educations of Regulators, Trustees, and Advocates in Healthcare conversions. The grant was given to the Division to develop and conduct a national training program for regulators dealing with for-profit acquisitions of nonprofit hospitals and other healthcare entities. Regulators gathered in Massachusetts from every state in the country. Johanna co-drafted the regulator manual and accompanying training video on the topic.

In September 2000, Attorney General Reilly selected Johanna to receive an Attorney General Award for Excellence. Johanna graduated from the University of New Hampshire and Suffolk University Law School.  Prior to attending law school Johanna worked as a child protective social worker in New Hampshire.

For her Access to Justice Fellowship, Johanna will work with the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to assist in developing a legal analysis for adoption records dated from 1878, when the MSPCC was the sole child protection agency for Massachusetts, to 1979, when the legislature created the Department of Social Services. The legal status of these MSPCC records vis-à-vis public record requests, privacy issues, and the rights of individuals to access these records is the primary focus of the fellowship.