Background: The Supreme Court of the United States is seen in Washington, D.C., March 26, 2024. Inset: Donald Trump listens during a roundtable with industry executives about reopening country after the coronavirus closures, May 29, 2020, in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
In the midst of handing down a defeat to a former public defender who sued the U.S. judiciary for allegedly mishandling her sexual harassment claim, an 84-year-old federal judge had some choice words for the U.S. Supreme Court and its recent decision on presidential immunity.
The words were tucked away in a footnote of a 285-page opinion from U.S. District Judge William Young, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan.
Young, as first pointed out by Liz Dye at Above the Law, let the critique of the high court fly while simultaneously lamenting conditions of the federal judiciary that permit it to be exempt from discrimination claims filed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Caryn Strickland, a former assistant federal public defender in North Carolina, first sued in 2020 alleging that a quid pro quo sexual harassment claim she filed against supervisor J.P. Davis, was mishandled by officials, according to Reuters. That mishandling cost her job, she claimed, and was an example of gender bias in the workplace and retaliation. Davis, she alleged, had offered to advance her career and get her a raise after writing in an email, “just remember I deal in pay-for-stay :)” and when she filed her complaint, she alleged those tasked to handle it wrongfully and improperly interfered.
Strickland represented herself in a nonjury trial in Asheville in January along with her co-counsel and husband Cooper Strickland. In the end, they failed to convince the court that her equal protection or due process rights were violated or that officials who handled her complaint had similarly infringed on her rights.
Young, a Massachusetts judge who is presiding over the case due to conflicts of interest from other judges in the North Carolina venue where Strickland first sued, explained that while there was some acknowledged hostility toward Strickland, his ultimate ruling was not because her claim was made in bad faith. But as a matter of law, the judge found in the Aug. 9 opinion, the U.S. judiciary is exempt from lawsuits invoking protections under Title VII.
There are some 30,000 employees in the federal judiciary who are lacking these protections against discrimination, Reuters pointed out after Strickland lost her claim. And notably, Strickland testified before Congress in 2022 about this dearth of protections. In his ruling, Young said there are much-needed reforms for the system and he lamented that Strickland saw her “desired career in public service stunted” and her ability to render much-needed legal services “withered.”
But ultimately her resignation, the opinion concluded, was her own and not the byproduct of alleged harassment or retaliation.
The judge found Strickland was “without redress under the present legal framework,” but said that this “cannot be a cause for congratulation on the part of federal judges or administrators.”
In his order, Young’s prescription for the way forward, at least in part, included his recommendation that mediation between parties be voluntary instead of mandatory when claims of sexual harassment are raised and that judicial review come earlier in the process, not later.
In this vein, he praised Strickland and her husband for their “trial advocacy” in her case.
The nation, he wrote, was at a “hinge moment where we need every trial attorney we can get.”
“Before trial Ms. Strickland and her husband told the Court that neither one had ever tried a case. Now you have. Quite an experience, isn’t it? I have been a trial judge longer than most of you have been alive and have taught trial advocacy and evidence for over forty years,” Young wrote in a footnote of his ruling. “Each one of you did a fine professional job. You government attorneys were thorough, fair, ethical without overreach (though I don’t buy the argument she ought be earning in what the average Duke Law School graduate at Big Law is taking home. That’s just wrong) … A fine job as well. Thank you all. I urge each of you to continue in trial work. In Ms. Strickland’s case, I urge you to nurture your evident trial skills in some public service position where they can be put to use.”
And then, in a moment of reflection, the judge wrote that of late, the Supreme Court had done its duty to affirm “America’s long-standing reliance on our jury system.”
Just look to the high court’s 6-3 ruling in June in Erlinger v. United States, Young noted. In that case, the court found that under the Armed Career Criminal Act, the Fifth and Sixth Amendments require that a jury reach a unanimous determination beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant’s prior offenses were committed on separate occasions.
Or, Young wrote, consider the civil case of S.E.C. v. Jarkesy resolved this year by the justices. In that decision, as Law&Crime reported, the justices ruled 6-3 that when the Securities and Exchange Commission seeks civil penalties against a defendant for securities fraud, the Seventh Amendment entitles that defendant to a jury trial.
These rulings are so sound, Young wrote, they will “stand for decades.”
But then, the jurist lamented, there was the seemingly inapposite ruling in Trump v. United States:
But see Trump v. United States, 144 S. Ct. 2312 (2024) (a six-member majority, eschewing historical analysis sought fundamentally to redesign the relationship between the sovereign people and the first citizen of the Republic).
As Above the Law noted, though it was a stinging remark for a jurist who had said his time on the bench is coming to a close, it seems unlikely the high court’s position on immunity will be undone anytime soon, least of which by Young’s passing remark. The bench currently has a conservative majority thanks to Trump’s three appointments of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh.
As Law&Crime reported, the decision on presidential immunity among the majority saw sharp dissent. Justice Sonia Sotomayor slammed her colleagues, writing that they had created a regime in which “the President is now king above the law” with their ruling and that she feared for democracy.
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