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Deborah A. Batts
(1947 - living) U.S.A.

Deborah Batts

Federal judge

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In June of 1994, Deborah Batts was sworn in as a Federal District Judge for Manhattan, becoming the nation's first openly lesbian African-American federal judge. When her colleagues at Fordham University Law School told Deborah Batts that she had been appointed to the federal judiciary, she thought they were playing a joke on her. After they persisted, Batts found that they were telling the truth.

She had been appointed by President Clinton and approved by the Senate. Batts wavered briefly before accepting. She loved to teach, and the position initially held little attraction for her. But eventually she rose to the new challenge. The self-described, "passionate, fair, and in your face" attorney became district judge for Manhattan, the first openly gay African-American to hold a federal judgeship.

Born in Philadelphia, Batts was drawn to the legal profession after the Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations. She attended Radcliffe and then received her JD from Harvard, a place she found "cold and almost dehumanizing," but which finally welcomed her back as a distinguished alumna. After several years at a prominent New York corporate firm, she left to work as an assistant U.S. attorney with the prosecutor's office. In 1984 she took a position at Fordham Law School, the first African-American to do so, teaching family and property law.

Batts, a moderate described by lawyers before her bench as "intellectually curious, thoughtful, and fair," does not want to be known as "the gay judge." She counts equally her roles as African-American, mother, and lawyer, and opines that "when one predominates, it's going to cause a problem." But she is impassioned in her call for LGBT legal rights and is a member of the New York Gay and Lesbian Bar. A portrait of Batts hangs at Harvard Law School, and it seems only fitting that it is the first portrait of an African-American woman or an out person at the school.

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