Federal Judiciary Misleadingly Conflates Low Number Of Sexual Harassment Complaints With Lack Of Misconduct

Just 9% of the 78 Employee Dispute Resolution (EDR) matters initiated by federal court employees from 2021-23 were initiated by term law clerks, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (“AO”) 2023 Workplace Report. That’s around 7 complaints over a 2-year period, or fewer than 5 misconduct complaints per year. This negligible number of workplace misconduct complaints suggests limited use of the federal judiciary’s internal dispute resolution process and little progress toward fostering a culture of reporting.

Yet federal judiciary in general, and the AO in particular, seems not to understand that there is no greater power disparity in the legal profession than between a fresh-out-of-law-school clerk and a life-tenured federal judge, necessitating at least the same workplace anti-discrimination protections for judicial law clerks, that the rest of us enjoy.

EDR is a Band-Aid over a bullet hole. Sweeping reform, including but not limited to total overhaul of the EDR Plan and extending federal anti-discrimination protections to clerks, is urgently necessary.