Court Culture Seen As Barrier To Workplace Misconduct Fixes

"Considering the enormous power disparity between subordinate and principal, lack of antidiscrimination protections for employees, and dearth of effective reporting channels or law clerk points of contact for assistance, judicial chambers are workplaces particularly conducive to abusive conduct," Aliza Shatzman told Law360, necessitating at least the same workplace protections for judiciary employees, as most other workers enjoy. "There is no reason why antidiscrimination laws that apply to everybody else should not apply to judges," Shatzman added.

In the wake of several high profile judicial ethics scandals, as well as former federal public defender Caryn Devins Strickland’s lawsuit against the federal judiciary, alleging the Employee Dispute Resolution (EDR) Plan is facially unfair and unfair as applied to her; and a recently-released 2023 federal judiciary Workplace Conduct Report highlighting the judiciary’s negligible progress, LAP’s President Aliza Shatzman spoke with Law360 about barriers to reform and necessary changes to truly ensure safe workplaces for judiciary employees.

“The judiciary is facing a reckoning here,” Shatzman said. Meaningless window dressing changes are just “nibbling around the edges" and not getting the job done, considering the systemic workplace issues plaguing the federal courts.