Courts

The Other Federal Judge Advancing The 'I HATE BLACK PEOPLE' Law Student's Career

Yeah, she's in the express lane of the legal profession.

By  
on

It was only last week that we called out Eleventh Circuit Judge William Pryor for giving George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School (say it with me, ASSLaw) student Crystal Clanton a clerkship for 2023-24. For those who may not have been following along with the exploits of Clanton, I’m not just raging against a rando law student for funsies. Nope, she has quite the history.

Clanton was let go from conservative student group Turning Point USA in 2017 after reports that she texted co-workers, “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all . . . I hate blacks. End of story.” Yeah, she’s a real peach. And there were more reports of bigoted comments from Clanton, but that didn’t stop Ginni Thomas (Clarence’s wife) from hiring her or ASSLaw from admitting her.

So, yeah. When Judge Pryor decided to hand out the uber-prestigious appellate clerkship to someone with this problematic past, it’s certainly worthy of conversation. But Pryor isn’t the only federal judge enamored with Clanton despite (or, perhaps because of) her history.

Clanton is spending the year after graduation (and before her appellate clerkship begins) clerking for Judge Corey Maze of the Northern District of Alabama. Maze was appointed to the bench in 2019 by Donald Trump, and is a Federalist Society member — because of course he is.

And speaking of Judge Pryor — he’s been mum on his hiring decision. I’m sure he’s just hoping the controversy will blow over. But as Kyle Whitmire wrote for AL.com, Pryor’s hiring decision speaks volumes:

Pryor is a gatekeeper. And when you let one person through that gate, you inevitably leave someone else locked on the outside. There are thousands of well-qualified candidates for a job like that every year.

And Pryor picked the one with at least one documented instance of saying racist stuff.

The story here isn’t about what Clanton did or didn’t say in a text. It’s about what her hire says to all those folks left on the other side of the gate. That it’s all about who you know, not what you know. That knowing the right people or going to the right law school means more than what comes up when someone Googles your name.

Perhaps most important for an appellate court judge, it’s about who gets second chances.

And, while this may stink for the actually hard-working and well-qualified folks who get clerkships, the legal industry needs to stop seeing “federal clerk” as an automatic checkmark that denotes eliteness. Because the case for slipping standards is out there. One of the consequences of the Federalist Society’s stranglehold over the conservative path to the judiciary is that being a true believer is valued more than robust reasoning (as part of FedSoc’s quest to prevent another David Souter — that is, a Republican who doesn’t automatically use his position to co-sign every aspect of the current GOP’s platform).

Sponsored

So while there is deserved outrage over Clanton’s greenlight to the elite levels of the legal profession, there’s likely to be a whole lot more to come.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

Sponsored

Topics

, , , , , ,