After weeks of incredulous and offensive sexual assault allegations used to derail the confirmation process for then-D.C. Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh, following the 50-48 Senate vote to confirm him, the news Supreme Court justice’s first action was to hire an all-female staff of law clerks, the first in U.S. history to do so. For over a decade on the federal court, a majority of the law clerks he hired were women, showing his attitude towards women in the workplace has been long carried out.
“My women law clerks said I was one of the strongest advocates in the federal judiciary for women lawyers,” Kavanaugh said to the Senate Judiciary Committee during the hearing weeks ago, according to The Washington Post. He added, “And they wrote that the legal profession is fairer and more equal because of me.”
Justice Kavanaugh also explained that he has made a special effort to hire women after reading a story years ago about the unequal balance between men and woman hired for reputable clerk positions at the U.S. Supreme Court and for other federal judges. Moreover, Kavanaugh told senators that if he was to be confirmed, he had to hire “a first group of four law clerks who could be available to clerk at the Supreme Court for me on a moment’s notice.”
During his 12 years on the federal bench, “no federal judge — not a single one in the country — has sent more women law clerks to clerk on the Supreme Court than I have,” Kavanaugh said. Of the positions that are to be filled, he said during the hearing, “All four are women. If confirmed, I’ll be the first justice in the history of the Supreme Court to have a group of all-women law clerks. That is who I am.”
The new clerks for Justice Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court are:
Kim Jackson: A Yale graduate who worked for Kavanaugh on the appeals court. She is also one the three African-Americans clerking at the Supreme Court this term, two of whom previously worked for Kavanaugh.
Shannon Grammel: A Harvard graduate and former president of the Stanford Law Review who was recently clerking for the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Megan Lacy: A University of Virginia graduate and former counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA). She was also part of the White House team that worked on Kavanaugh’s nomination.
Sara Nommensen: A Harvard graduate and student of Kavanaugh’s who worked at the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel.
