Deborah Batts

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Honorable Deborah A. Batts (born 13 April 1947) is a U.S. federal judge, currently serving on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She is the first and, as of 2006, the only openly LGBT person to have served as a judge of the United States federal courts.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she was educated at Radcliffe College and Harvard Law School. She subsequently clerked on the Federal Court on which she now serves as a Judge and later as an Assistant U.S. Attorney from 1979 to 1984. In 1984 she became an Associate Professor of Law at Fordham University before, in 1994 being appointed as a Federal District court judge by President Bill Clinton.

She appeared in news stories in early 2006 due to her involvement as a judge in a major case involving Citicorp and Bank of America, and in a case involving the former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman. Also ruled that a lawsuit in which record companies allege XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. is cheating them by letting consumers store songs can proceed toward trial.