Federal judges have enormous power over their courtrooms and their chambers, which can leave employees vulnerable to abuse, with few ways to report their concerns anonymously. Forty-two current and former federal judicial employees spoke to NPR about their experience of mistreatment working for judges appointed by presidents from both major political parties.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the focus of NPR's investigation in this episode?
Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And today on the pod, we have something special.
Our colleague, Kerry Johnson, who's NPR's justice correspondent, has been working for almost a year on a story about a subject we rarely hear about, what happens inside the chambers of a federal judge, especially when it comes to the way judges treat their clerks, who are young, vulnerable, and as Kerry found out, terrified of ever reporting any wrongdoing.
And just a warning, this piece contains a description of sexual assault. Carrie takes it from here.
In 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic began to shut things down, a recent law school graduate started a new job all the way across the country in Alaska. She accepted a coveted post as a law clerk for a federal judge.
Chapter 2: What are the experiences of federal judicial employees in the court system?
It's kind of like a unicorn. It's a position that follows you for the rest of your life. It's on the top of your resume. It's You know, people pay attention to it, especially a federal court clerkship. The clerk hoped this job would jumpstart her career.
She didn't know anyone else there, only the judge.
The judge was the HR department. The judge was my boss. The judge was a colleague. The judge was everything. He had all the power. He started testing her boundaries early on. It started immediately. The inappropriate conversations, there was a lot of talk about the judge's personal relationships, about sexual relationships.
She says she thought it was part of her job to listen to the judge and help him with anything. He was going through a divorce, and he began to text her constantly, to the point where her phone felt like an electric leash.
He'd told me that I was a confidant, and he'd given me the title of career clerk. And, you know, he'd spoken to me about what an honor that was. And, I mean, this is ridiculous, but I thought I was doing a public service.
That pressure built. He texted that she looked like a, quote, fucking Disney princess and that he liked her blue pants. He even asked how things were going with her boyfriend.
You know, I never had respite from being just a few text messages away from him. It was constant. It was during work. It was after work. It was all the time. In the summer of 2022, things got worse. That's when he told me he'd been communicating with this prosecutor that was appearing before him, and she had been sending nude photos.
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Chapter 3: How did the Alaska clerk's experience unfold?
And that was the breaking point for me, where I decided I needed to leave.
She stayed in Alaska, but she got a new job as a federal prosecutor. And this, she hoped, would put an end to the ordeal. As it turned out, that was wrong. The voice you've been hearing is not her real voice, although they are her words verbatim. We're using a voice actor because she was too afraid to talk. You'll understand why in a moment.
About a week after she left the judge's chamber, she ran into him at a party. I'm going to tell the next part of the story entirely from allegations in the court papers. That's in part because retelling it to me was too painful. At the party, he tried to get her to sit next to him on the couch. Eventually she left, but she got a text from him saying he needed to talk to her.
It was cold that night, so the judge suggested they chat inside his apartment. Once inside, the judge insisted she come to the bedroom. At first, she sat on the corner of the bed but he wanted her to lay down. Then, she told investigators, he grabbed her breast. She tried to pull his arm off, but he was really strong.
I just remember thinking, like there's nothing I can do about this, she told the investigators. This is about to happen. Like I always felt like this thing he could not touch, and finally he felt like he could touch. He took off her pants and performed oral sex on her. A judge's control over the future of a young lawyer is real and lasting.
With only a phone call, a judge can open doors to a lucrative job at a law firm or shut them permanently. And there's no one really policing what happens inside a judge's chambers beside the judge themselves. Unlike people who work for private companies, nonprofit groups, or Congress, employees of the federal courts usually cannot sue for mistreatment.
For nearly a year, I interviewed 42 people, current and former workers within the federal court system, about their experience. They're men and women who work for more than two dozen judges, appointed by presidents from both major political parties. I heard from people whose self-confidence was shattered by judges who screamed so loudly others could hear from the hallways.
People who were fired after a week or two on the job for no clear reason. Some describe sexual harassment like in the case of the Alaska clerk. Many more shared episodes of bullying, and others said they faced discrimination because they had a disability or were pregnant, like Jessica Horton.
When she graduated from law school at age 24, she felt lucky to get a job as a law clerk to a new federal judge. Horton says she disclosed her pregnancy a couple months before she started work. And at the time, it didn't seem like it would be much of a problem for the judge, who was herself a mom.
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Chapter 4: What systemic issues exist in reporting judicial misconduct?
And I remember I was still wearing all the pads because I was still bleeding. I was leaking milk everywhere. And I just remember dropping him off at my mom's house and being gone for those few hours and just being completely miserable.
She returned to work fighting infections and bullying from another clerk in the chambers. Her clerkship lasted a year, and leaving wasn't a possibility in her mind.
And I felt like it would have been career suicide at that point to leave my clerkship.
She started counting down the days.
Yeah, literally on the calendar, and every day I'd cross it off and just count down the days until I could be done with that and put it behind me.
Starting out, Horton had been so excited about learning from the judge, having a mentor, maybe someday becoming a judge herself.
But after this experience, I changed my mind and I think kind of put a nail in the coffin of my legal career pretty early.
Her son is now nine years old. Sometimes they drive by the courthouse and she reminds him that's where he slept underneath her desk as a baby. Horton decided to talk to me on the record, in part because she's left the legal profession, and things can get pretty tough for clerks who speak out.
When the Alaska clerk reported the assault, she told a colleague who had been assigned to mentor her, but that mentor said she also had been coerced.
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Chapter 5: How does the power dynamic affect clerks in the federal judiciary?
Judge Joshua Kindred told investigators that the sexual experience was consensual and that he had no, quote, sinister intent. The special committee found the judge deliberately lied when he said nothing sexual had happened between them.
But the committee did not reach a conclusion about whether the judge sexually assaulted the former clerk, finding there was enough evidence to say the judge committed misconduct without even resolving that issue. Judge Kindred did not respond to NPR's attempts to reach him for comment. The clerk said she felt let down by the process. I want to be careful here.
And you respond in the way that you feel comfortable. After you left the job, the judge met up with you and assaulted you. And the Ninth Circuit report is less than clear in concluding that. But it's certainly clear in your mind and the mind of your attorney that is exactly what happened.
That is exactly what I experienced. Yes, I was sexually assaulted. I'm not sure why that was a fact in dispute. Perhaps not a fact in dispute, but not a conclusion drawn by the report. And I've never wavered on that fact, that that was immediately what I reported to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
We're going to take a quick break. More from Carrie in a moment.
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And we're back. Here's Carrie.
The federal judiciary points to the departure of the Alaska judge as a demonstration the system works. The Administrative Office of the Courts, which sets policy from Washington, says they've taken extensive steps to protect clerks and other workers since the MeToo movement swept the country in 2017. And they say they hold judges to the highest standards.
But our investigation uncovered problems with the reporting system in the judicial branch. For one, there's a widespread culture of fear. And there's a good reason for that. Jamie Baker is a former judge who also worked in the White House and the military.
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Chapter 6: What are the options for clerks facing abuse in the federal court system?
Judges are life tenured. The average age of federal judges right now is about 65 or 68. Law clerks, they are roughly, let's say, 26 to 30.
Gabe Roth is executive director of Fix the Court. He's pushing the federal courts to be more accountable. Here's the way the system works. Let's say a clerk has a problem. The first option is something called informal advice.
So informal advice can be anything like, you know, talk to the judge, write down your thoughts. It can be a lot of different sort of basic HR things that we've all spoken to HR people about.
The next step, however, gets more complicated.
If it's more serious, there are other options that you have. So something that's called an assisted resolution option.
The courts say there are about 500 people across the system who can hear about problems and offer advice. A lot of that happens informally, through mediation, where a clerk or other court employee can raise concerns and get an apology or even a job transfer. Then there's the most serious option, making a formal complaint. But staying anonymous is not guaranteed, clerks say.
I talked about that with Aliza Schatzman. She runs the Legal Accountability Project, a database where clerks can share honest feedback about judges, the good and the bad. I spoke with a clerk recently who talked about going in for an interview with investigators. One of the investigators was planning a party for the judge this clerk complained about.
And when the interview ended, the clerk walked out into the hallway and there was the judge about whom they were complaining.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't take it lightly when I say the federal judiciary is the most dangerous white collar workplace in America. There are no workplace protections. And year after year, thousands of young, eager, recent law graduates are sent into these federal clerkships.
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