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Ada Brown (judge)

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Ada Brown
Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas
Assumed office
September 13, 2019
Appointed byDonald Trump
Preceded byTerry R. Means
Associate Justice of the Fifth Court of Appeals of Texas
In office
September 3, 2013 – September 13, 2019
Appointed byRick Perry
Succeeded byDavid W. Evans
Judge of the Dallas County District Court
In office
2005–2007
Appointed byRick Perry
Personal details
Born (1974-11-08) November 8, 1974 (age 49)
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S.
NationalityUnited States
Choctaw Nation
Political partyRepublican
EducationSpelman College (BA)
Emory University School of Law (JD) Duke University (Master of Laws), class of 2024

Ada Elene Brown (born November 8, 1974) is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. She is a former trial judge of the Dallas County courts and a former Justice of the Fifth Court of Appeals of Texas. She is the first African-American woman federal judge nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate. She is also the first African American woman to sit as a federal judge in the 140- year-history of the Northern District of Texas.[1] A citizen of the Choctaw Nation, Brown is also one of six actively serving Native American federal judges of 673 federal district court judges.[2] When appointed to the federal bench, Brown became the only woman judge in the 233-year history of the Choctaw Nation to serve as a federal judge. She also is the first and only woman belonging to the Choctaw Nation tribe to ever sit as a federal judge, since the founding of the federal judiciary in 1786.[3]

Early life and education

Ada Elene Brown[4] was born on November 8, 1974 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.[5] She graduated as a valedictorian of her high school class, where she was elected both sophomore and junior class president.[6] She earned her Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from Spelman College, and her Juris Doctor from Emory University School of Law, both in Atlanta, Georgia.[7] Brown has also been accepted into Duke University School of Law’s LLM program and will graduate with her Master of Laws advanced law degree in 2024. Brown is a member of Mensa and is trilingual.[8] She is African American and Native American.[9][10]

Legal career

Criminal law practice

Brown began her career practicing criminal law. She served as a trial prosecutor at the Dallas County District Attorney's Office, where she tried over 100 jury trials to verdict as lead prosecutor. During this time, she became a felony trial prosecutor and prosecuted murders, rapes, kidnappings, and other felony crimes. She was known for taking on complex and controversial cases. She specialized in prosecuting felony internet crimes against children.[11] In 2005, Brown was one of 2.5% of attorneys under 40 selected by Super Lawyers magazine as a Rising Star in criminal prosecution.[11] Brown left the Dallas County District Attorney’s office to become a district court judge.

Brown served as a criminal district court judge after being a prosecutor. During this time, she presided over 50 jury trials and 100 bench trials. As a state trial judge, Brown was reversed only once by a higher court.[12]

Civil law practice

After leaving the trial bench, Brown practiced as a civil litigator at McKool Smith in Dallas, Texas, where her practice focused on high-stakes commercial litigation and complex patent infringement matters. [11] While there, she tried cases that resulted in some of the largest jury trial verdicts in the nation.

In a representative case, she presented evidence for plaintiffs about the technology of the ’350 patent to the jury in the Versata Development Group, Inc. v. SAP America, Inc. trial, where the jury awarded $345 million to her client, Versata. This award was increased to $391 million on final judgment. This was the 10th largest jury verdict in the US for 2011.[13]

Brown also presented plaintiff's evidence of damages to the jury in the Medtronic v. Boston Scientific patent infringement trial, where Boston Scientific was found to have infringed Medtronic's ’364, ’358, and ’057 patents. The jury returned a $250 million verdict in favor of her client. This was the 12th largest jury verdict in the US for 2008.[14]

In 2012 and 2013, Brown was one 2.5% of attorneys under 40 selected by Super Lawyers magazine as a Rising Star in commercial litigation.[11]

Law enforcement commissioner

Brown was appointed by Texas Governor Rick Perry to serve as a Commissioner for the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education, the regulatory agency responsible for licensing all police officers in Texas. Perry later appointed Brown as a Commissioner for the Texas Department of Public Safety, one of 5 people responsible for overseeing a $2.3 billion biennial budget and 10,000+ employees, including the legendary Texas Ranger Division as well as all state troopers in the Texas Highway Patrol.[15]

During her five years serving on the Texas Department of Public Safety Commission, Brown was known for her unwillingness to tolerate police misbehavior. During her term of service, she was responsible for firing many law enforcement officers whom she believed needed their badges taken away for the good of society. Because of her experience as a trial judge, Brown presided over the disciplinary trials of officers facing termination from DPS. Over the years, she presided over cases alleging a wide variety of outrageous behavior, such as using unnecessary deadly force without justification, committing domestic violence against wives and girlfriends, physically and sexually abusing children, lying about material facts during investigations, choking suspects when such force was both inappropriate and unnecessary to gain compliance, offering female drivers warnings rather than tickets in exchange for sex, using sensitive law enforcement background search tools for personal use, driving drunk, and failing to properly investigate high-priority cases such as those involving murder-suicides.

Honors

When she ended her service as a Commissioner for the Texas Department of Public Safety to become an appellate court judge, Governor Rick Perry awarded her the Yellow Rose of Texas Award. Brown was also named an Honorary Captain of the Texas Rangers by the Texas Department of Public Safety.[11]

Brown has also been honored by the Dallas Bar Association as a Living Legend.[16] Additionally, she has also been honored by the Dallas Black Women Lawyers’ Association as the recipient of the club’s Charlye O. Farris Award, named for Texas’ first African-American female woman lawyer.

Judicial career

State judicial service

Brown served as a trial judge of the Dallas County Criminal District Court, before leaving the bench to join McKool Smith.[11] When Brown was appointed to serve as a trial judge at age 30, she was then the youngest sitting judge in Texas.[17] As a trial judge, she was reversed just once by a higher court.

On September 3, 2013, Governor Rick Perry appointed her to serve as a Justice on the Fifth Court of Appeals of Texas, Texas' largest and busiest intermediate appellate court. At the time of her appointment to the Fifth Court of Appeals of Texas, at age 38, she was then the youngest sitting appellate court justice in Texas.[18]

Brown served on the Fifth Court of Appeals of Texas for six years, during which time she heard over 1,500 civil and criminal appeals.[11] Of the over 545 majority opinions she authored during her six years on the appellate bench, Brown was reversed by a higher court just 5 times, giving Brown an extremely impressive 0.92% reversal rate.[19][20]

Brown was a well-respected jurist on both the state district bench and the state appellate bench. In the last anonymous nonpartisan judicial evaluation poll performed by the Dallas Bar Association, Brown was the highest ranked of 13 appellate judges on her court in 4 of the 5 areas of evaluation. These categories included demonstrating a proper judicial temperament and demeanor; being open-minded; writing legal opinions that demonstrate well-reasoned clearly written dispositions of the case before her based on proper application of the law to the record; and she was the highest rated judge on her court for approval of her performance overall as a judge.[21] She resigned from the Fifth Court of Appeals of Texas upon her appointment to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

Federal judicial service

Brown testifies to the Senate Judiciary Committee during her nomination hearing to be a federal judge on April 30, 2019.

On March 15, 2019, President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Brown to serve as a United States district judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas.[7] On March 26, 2019, her nomination was sent to the Senate. Ada Brown was nominated to the seat vacated by Judge Terry R. Means, who assumed senior status on July 3, 2013.[22] On April 30, 2019, a hearing on her nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee.[23] On June 13, 2019, her nomination was reported out of committee by an 18–4 vote.[24] On July 30, 2019, the United States Senate invoked cloture on her nomination by a 79–9 vote.[25] On September 11, 2019, her nomination was confirmed by an 80–13 vote.[26] Senators who voted against Ada E. Brown were Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer, Tammy Baldwin, Richard Blumenthal, Sherrod Brown, Maria Cantwell, Catherine Cortez Masto, Kirsten Gillibrand, Mazie Hirono, Ed Markey, Patty Murray, Brian Schatz, Debbie Stabenow and Ron Wyden.[27] She received her judicial commission on September 13, 2019.

Brown was confirmed in a batch of ten Texas federal judicial candidates nominated by President Trump. The other nine nominees were confirmed by the Senate with relatively tight votes ranging from 49 to 46 in favor of confirmation to a high of 56–41 in favor of confirmation. Brown's nomination had significant bipartisan support, and resulted in an unusually high number of Democratic senators joining with Republican senators to confirm her nomination. She received an 80-13 confirmation vote, which was substantially higher than that received by most Trump federal judicial nominees.[28]

Brown was unanimously rated well-qualified by the American Bar Association.[29] In the Dallas Bar Association's 2021 anonymous nonpartisan judicial performance poll, lawyers ranked Brown number 1 in the category of judicial impartiality out of all the other Article III federal district court judges included in the poll.[16]

Since taking the bench in 2019, Brown has resolved nearly 1000 criminal and civil cases. Brown has been reversed by a higher court only 6 times, giving her an outstanding 0.68% reversal rate.[30]

Brown talked about her job as a federal judge in several interviews with magazines.[31][32][6] Brown was also featured in a video for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.[33] She also talked about her path to the federal bench in a SCOTUS 101 podcast.[34]

Brown was the first African-American woman appointed to a bench in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas in its 140-year existence.[35] She is also the first African-American woman Article III federal judge nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate,[36] and one of 6 Native wom in US history to sit on the federal bench.[37]

Memberships

Brown is a member of Mensa, Daughters of the American Revolution, the Mayflower Society, and the Federalist Society. Brown joined Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority while at Spelman College. She is also a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.[11][38][10][39]

See also

References

  1. ^ Gregory, Patrick L; Holland, Jake (2019-06-13). "Trump Picks Who Wouldn't Say Brown Decided Correctly Advance". Bloomberg Law. Retrieved 2020-06-14.
  2. ^ "American Indian Judges on the Federal Courts". Federal Judicial Center. Retrieved November 13, 2021.
  3. ^ |url= https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/annual-observances/anniversary-federal-court-system#:~:text=Facts%20About%20the%20Judiciary%20Act%20of%201789&text=The%20Judiciary%20Act%20of%201789%20established%20the%20federal%20court%20system,law%20on%20September%2024%2C%201789.
  4. ^ "Justice Ada Elene Brown Profile | Dallas, TX Lawyer | Martindale.com". www.martindale.com.
  5. ^ Oklahoma State Vital Records Index
  6. ^ a b "Ada Brown serves to inspire others | Choctaw Nation". www.choctawnation.com.
  7. ^ a b "President Donald J. Trump Announces Judicial Nominees – The White House". trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov.
  8. ^ "Judge Ada Brown | Northern District of Texas | United States District Court". www.txnd.uscourts.gov.
  9. ^ "Ada Brown Confirmed to be Federal Judge for Texas". www.spelman.edu.
  10. ^ a b "American Indian Judges on the Federal Courts". FJC.com. Federal Judicial Center. Retrieved 25 December 2020.
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h "Questionnaire for Judicial Nominees: Ada Elene Brown". www.judiciary.senate.gov.
  12. ^ "Fifth District Court of Appeals at Dallas". Fifth District Court of Appeals at Dallas.
  13. ^ Smith, McKool. "McKool Smith Wins $345 Million Verdict for Versata Software in Texas Damages Retrial". www.prnewswire.com.
  14. ^ "Xconomy: Jury Awards Medtronic $250 Million in Patent Suit Against Boston Scientific". Xconomy. May 28, 2008.
  15. ^ "Ada Brown". Ballotpedia.
  16. ^ a b https://www.dallasbar.org/?pg=events&evAction=showDetail&eid=259332&evSubAction=viewMonth&calmonth=202211.
  17. ^ "The Daily Judge". www.thedailyjudge.com.
  18. ^ "McKool Smith Attorney Ada Brown Appointed as Justice of Texas 5th Court of Appeals". www.mckoolsmith.com. 2013-09-03. Retrieved 2019-03-15.
  19. ^ [https:/www.txcourts.gov/supreme/ "Supreme Court of Texas"]. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  20. ^ "Texas Court of Criminal Appeals".
  21. ^ "Dallas Bar Association Bar Poll". Dallas Bar Association.
  22. ^ "Seven Nominations Sent to the Senate – The White House". trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov.
  23. ^ McDonald, Robin (April 30, 2019). "Senator Claims Trump's Judicial Picks 'Instructed' to Evade 'Brown v. Board' Questions". Law.com. Retrieved 15 May 2019.
  24. ^ "Results of Executive Business Meeting – June 13, 2019, Senate Judiciary Committee" (PDF).
  25. ^ "On the Cloture Motion (Motion to Invoke Cloture: Ada E. Brown to be U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas)". www.senate.gov.
  26. ^ "On the Nomination (Confirmation: Ada E. Brown, of Texas, to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of Texas)". www.senate.gov. Sep 11, 2019.
  27. ^ Keene, Houston (January 28, 2022). "13 Senate Democrats voted against Black female judge nominated by Trump". Fox News.
  28. ^ "PN524 - Nomination of Ada E. Brown for The Judiciary, 116th Congress (2019–2020)". www.congress.gov. Sep 11, 2019.
  29. ^ "Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary: Ratings of Article III and Article IV Judicial Nominees" (PDF). American Bar Association. December 15, 2020.
  30. ^ "Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals". www.ca5.uscourts.gov. Retrieved 2022-11-26.
  31. ^ "An Interview with U.S. District Judge Ada Brown". 10 March 2021.
  32. ^ "American Spirit Magazine". Daughters of the American Revolution. Apr 14, 2014.
  33. ^ "Those Who Inspire-Ada Brown". www.kxii.com.
  34. ^ "March Madness at the Court". SCOTUS 101. April 1, 2021.
  35. ^ "Press Release: Ada Elene Brown | Northern District of Texas | United States District Court". www.txnd.uscourts.gov.
  36. ^ "Trump Picks Who Wouldn't Say Brown Decided Correctly Advance". news.bloomberglaw.com.
  37. ^ "Just Two Native American Federal Judges Serve—Lauren King May be the Third". Forbes.
  38. ^ "African-American Judges on the Federal Courts". FJC.com. Federal Judicial Center. Retrieved 25 December 2020.
  39. ^ "Those Who Inspire". kxii.com. KXII News Station. Retrieved 25 December 2020.

External links

Legal offices
Preceded by Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas
2019–present 		Incumbent
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