By Eric M. Gutiérrez, Legislative & Public Policy Director for the National Employment Lawyers Association
President Obama routinely gets high marks for his efforts to diversify the federal judiciary by nominating “non-traditional” candidates for federal judgeships. In fact, nearly three of every four nominees confirmed to the federal bench during his Administration are either women or minorities; he also is the first president who hasn’t selected a majority of white males for lifetime judgeships.
Articles and commentary addressing judicial diversity, however, have focused typically on racial, ethnic, and gender diversity. The National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA) recently published a report entitled, “Judicial Hostility To Workers’ Rights: The Case For Professional Diversity On The Federal Bench,” which targets another type of diversity that is equally as important and sorely lacking on the federal bench — professional diversity. Like his predecessors, President Obama’s nominees have largely been corporate lawyers, judges, or prosecutors prior to their nominations, while fewer have been public defenders, legal services attorneys, or public interest lawyers. Even fewer have devoted their professional careers to representing workers and civil rights litigants.
Overlooking qualified candidates whose professional experience includes representing workers in employment, labor, and civil rights cases inevitably reinforces the image of a judiciary that is unfamiliar with, and therefore indifferent to, the plight of everyday Americans. Moreover, as the NELA report points out, the lack of professional diversity has contributed to the increasing judicial hostility workers face in employment cases and the deleterious effect on workers’ access to the courts to vindicate their rights.
Justice Byron R. White remarked on the value of Thurgood Marshall’s professional diversity:
ort-shrift of the NFL's Rooney Rule, which is intended to diversify the League's head-coaching ranks, may actually work to strengthen the rule, 
ue like the NFL (or the NBA or NHL), the respective teams are independently-owned and they compete both on and off the field. Put another way, teams resemble competitors and thus, per Section 1, their collaborations are presumably subject to Section 1 scrutiny. Subjecting collaborations to Section 1 scrutiny does not necessarily mean those collaborations violate Section 1; many types of collaborations by NFL teams, such as game rules or various procedures for league operations, promote competition and satisfy Section1 scrutiny. Other types of collaborations, however, such as an exclusive licensing contract between every team and one clothing company, could prove more anti-competitive than pro-competitive. Exclusive contracts in sports can limit competition in ways that raise prices and reduce consumer choices.
ern and Crawford arose out of the Sixth Circuit. Some court-watchers say it is likely that the Supreme Court will pluck another Sixth Circuit Title VII retaliation case from its docket. The Court may hear Thompson v. North American Stainless (09-291) to determine whether Title VII's anti-retaliation provision protects an employee who alleged he was terminated in retaliation for his then-fiancée's (now his wife) EEOC claim alleging sex discrimination.