| Joseph Louis Tauro | |
|---|---|
| Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 1972 |
|
| Nominated by | Richard Nixon |
| Preceded by | Francis J. W. Ford |
| United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts | |
| In office 1972–1972 |
|
| Preceded by | James N. Gabriel |
| Succeeded by | James N. Gabriel |
| Personal details | |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Brown University Cornell Law School |
| Occupation | Attorney Judge |
Joseph Louis Tauro (pronounced /ˈtɔroʊ/; born 1931) is a United States federal judge. He is the son of the late Massachusetts Chief Justice G. Joseph Tauro.
Born in Winchester, Massachusetts, Tauro received an A.B. from Brown University in 1953 and an LL.B. from Cornell Law School in 1956. He was a First Lieutenant in the United States Army from 1956 to 1958, and was an assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts from 1959 to 1960. He was in private practice in Boston and Lynn, Massachusetts, from 1960 to 1971. He was a chief legal counsel to the Governor of Massachusetts, John A. Volpe, from 1965 to 1968. He was the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts in 1972.
On September 12, 1972, Tauro was nominated by President Richard M. Nixon to a seat on the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated by Francis J. W. Ford. Tauro was confirmed by the United States Senate on October 12, 1972, and received his commission on October 17, 1972. He served as chief judge from 1992 to 1999. Tauro remains the longest-serving active judge appointed by Nixon.
On July 8, 2010, in the cases of Gill v. Office of Personnel Management and Massachusetts v. United States Department of Health and Human Services, Tauro issued decisions holding unconstitutional that part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act that defined marriage "as a legal union exclusively between one man and one woman."[1] Those decisions are automatically stayed for two weeks by federal court rules and were extended when the Department of Justice appealed on October 12, 2010.[2]