This story includes descriptions of sexual abuse.
In 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic began its rampage, a recent law school graduate started a new job in Alaska.
She hoped the coveted post – as law clerk to a federal judge – would jump-start her career. Instead, it was almost derailed by harassment and abuse.
“The judge was the HR department, the judge was my boss, the judge was a colleague,” she said. “The judge was everything, he had all the power.”
The power imbalance between judges with lifetime tenure and the young law clerks who work alongside them is both vast and unique to the judiciary. People in the federal court system don’t have the same kind of job protections enshrined in law that most other Americans do.
The courts largely police themselves. That’s because judicial independence – and protecting the balance of power – give judges a tremendous amount of sway over their own workplace rules. At the same time, federal judges have emerged in recent weeks as the lone check on employment abuses elsewhere in the federal government.
A nearly year-long NPR investigation has found problems with the courts’ internal system – and a pervasive culture of fear about blowing the whistle. Forty-two current and former federal judicial employees spoke to NPR about their experience working for judges appointed by presidents from both major political parties.
One of them is the former clerk in Alaska. She’s not being named because she alleges she’s the survivor of sexual assault.
Early in her clerkship, the judge started testing her boundaries, with inappropriate conversations about his personal relationships. She thought it was part of her job to listen and help with anything in his life, she said.
“He had told me that I was a confidante and he had given me the title of career clerk and, you know, he had spoken to me about what an honor that was and… I mean this is ridiculous, but I thought I was doing a public service,” she said.
As the judge’s marriage came apart, he began to text her constantly, to the point where her phone felt like an “electric leash.” In one message, he said she looked like a “f****** Disney princess.” In another, he told her he liked her blue pants.
Things got worse by the summer of 2022, so she found a new job, as a federal prosecutor in Alaska.
About a week after she left the judge’s chambers, she ran into him at a party. He tried to get her to sit next to him on the couch there. 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. Then, he 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, she says, 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.” The judge later told investigators it was consensual.
He took off her pants and performed oral sex on her.
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