Steve Hyder grew up in Rogersville, Tennessee and graduated from Carson-Newman in 1974. After graduation, he attended the College of Communications at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, working toward a Master’s Degree in Communications, and in 1975 he enrolled at the Mississippi College School of Law in Clinton, Mississippi. Following graduation from law school in 1978 he began working for the Tennessee Valley Authority as an investigator in TVA’s Equal Opportunity Compliance Office, where he investigated formal complaints of employment discrimination which had been filed against TVA.
In July 1981, Hyder sat for and successfully passed the Mississippi bar examination during the time that he was employed by the Jackson, Mississippi Area Office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as an investigator. In October 1985, he began working as a Trial Attorney for the EEOC’s Dallas, Texas District Office. While with EEOC’s Dallas office, Hyder gained significant experience in litigation and trial work in the Federal Courts of the Northern District of Texas and all Federal Districts of Oklahoma in cases alleging discrimination in employment on the bases of race, color, sex, age, religion, national origin and retaliation.
In January 1991, Hyder returned to Tennessee, where he worked as an attorney for the Nashville Hearing Office of the Social Security Administration’s Office of Hearings & Appeals. In this position, he assisted Administrative Law Judges in drafting decisions on claims for disability under the Social Security Act and other similar Federal laws. In 1992 he was admitted to practice law in the State of Tennessee.
In June 1993, Hyder entered the private practice of law in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, and in March 2000, he moved his office to Maryville, Tennessee.