Chad Andrew Readler, born in Pontiac, Michigan, in 1972, is an American lawyer and adjunct professor who serves as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Prior to his appointment, he was a principal deputy and former acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice. Readler was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit by President Donald Trump (R) on January 23, 2019. Readler had his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 7, 2019.
On March 6, 2019, Chad Readler was confirmed by the Senate with a 52-47 vote.
Education and Early Career
Readler graduated from the University of Michigan in 1994. He attended the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law for one year, then transferred to the University of Michigan Law School, where he was an editor of the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform.
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After graduating from law school, Readler served as a law clerk for Judge Alan Eugene Norris of the Sixth Circuit from 1997 to 1998.
From 1998 to 2017, Reader was in private practice at the law firm Jones Day in its Columbus, Ohio, office, becoming a partner in 2007 in the firm's Issues and Appeals practice.
While at Jones Day, Readler represented the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. He also successfully argued before the Supreme Court of the United States in McQuiggin v. Perkins on behalf of a pro bono client claiming actual innocence.
Government Service
Prior to becoming a judge, Readler served as Acting United States Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division from January 2017 to September 2018. He was involved in some of the most high-profile cases in the Trump administration.
DOJ Attorney Chad Readler would have been controversial simply by the nature of his work for the Trump campaign, and in defending some of the White House’s most controversial initiatives. However, the strong opposition by home-state Sen.
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Since 2017, Readler has served as Acting Assistant Attorney General and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General under the Trump Administration.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: Readler is a controversial nominee. His record is likely to be strongly objectionable to Democrats, given his close affiliation with Trump and the Administration’s initiatives.
Add to that the fact that Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is opposed, and it’s likely that every single Democratic vote at the end of the day will come down against Readler.
Controversial Stances and Legal Positions
As a high-ranking official in the Sessions Justice Department, Chad Readler took several controversial legal positions:
- Sought to Weaken Health Care Protections: In Texas v. United States, Readler filed a brief refusing to defend the Affordable Care Act and its protections for people with pre-existing conditions, arguing that such protections were unconstitutional.
- Advocated for Harmful Citizenship Question on 2020 Census: Readler argued that adding the citizenship question was necessary to better enforce the Voting Rights Act and was added at the behest of the Justice Department.
- Worked to Undermine Voting Rights: Readler defended President Trump’s voter suppression commission that was created in 2017 to investigate the president’s claim that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election.
- Defended Inhumane Anti-Immigration Policies: Readler defended the Trump administration’s family separation policy at the border and President Trump’s executive order to detain immigrant families at the border indefinitely.
- Defended Anti-LGBTQ Policies: Readler defended the Trump administration’s discriminatory ban on transgender people serving in the military and argued that Title VII should not cover discrimination based on sexual orientation.
- Hostile to Reproductive Freedom: In the case Garza v. Hargan, Mr. Readler argued that the federal government should be able to block an undocumented minor from obtaining an abortion, even if she is raped.
- Undermined Public Education: Mr. Readler has worked for years to undermine Ohio’s public education system and to limit educational benefits and protections for Ohio school children.
- Fought Against Consumer Protections: Mr. Readler sought to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”), an independent agency created by Congress after the 2008 financial crisis to protect consumers from deceitful banks and lenders.
While still an associate at Jones Day, Chad wrote pieces criticizing judges. In 2004, Chad wrote a preview of a then-upcoming Supreme Court case, Roper v. Simmons. The Missouri Supreme Court had decided that executing minors violates the Eighth Amendment, and the state of Missouri appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the Eighth Amendment did not bar executing 16- or 17-year-olds.
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To try to head this off, Chad argued that actually, Americans loved killing kids. They just didn’t know it yet. “[W]hile opinion polls suggest that most Americans may oppose the use of capital punishment for juvenile offenders,” he wrote, “many may take a different view when they consider the facts of a specific case.”
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Judicial Career
On June 7, 2018, President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Readler to serve as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
On June 18, 2018, his nomination was sent to the Senate. President Trump nominated Readler to the seat being vacated by Judge Deborah L.
On January 3, 2019, his nomination was returned to the President under Rule XXXI, Paragraph 6 of the United States Senate.
Readler currently teaches a Presidential Powers Seminar at the University of Michigan Law School and the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University.
As a Sixth Circuit judge, Chad’s main priority appears to be protecting people in power from consequences. Usually those people are police and jail officials, but sometimes they’re huge, monied organizations.Although Chad isn’t an automatic vote to grant qualified immunity to cops, his record leans in one direction.
Chad has upheld qualified immunity for police and jail officials when officers tore a woman’s ACL while arresting her and then neglected to give her medical treatment in jail. He’s upheld qualified immunity for jail officials and a nurse who failed to give an inmate her prescription antacids after she had gastric bypass surgery, causing her to develop ulcers so serious she needed surgery.
Chad’s protection extends to prosecutors, too.
Some courts allow defendants to sue prosecutors when they destroy evidence. But Chad held that the Sixth Circuit wouldn’t be one of those courts. Allowing judges to hold prosecutors accountable for destroying evidence that could exonerate a criminal defendant, Chad wrote, would “tie the hands of prosecutors by requiring them to maintain and preserve everything collected as evidence, regardless of relevance.”
Finally, last year, Ohio State University tried to dismiss well-founded complaints that it knowingly allowed the school’s athletic program doctor to molest hundreds of student athletes for decades.
Chad clarified that he found Ohio State’s conduct to be reprehensible, but from his review of the evidence, the doctor’s abuse was an “open secret” on campus and the plaintiffs should have intuited that the university could be liable. And he accused his colleagues of motivated reasoning, heavily implying that they had decided that Ohio State would be found liable and made up an opinion to support it.
Affiliations and Memberships
- Member of the Federalist Society from 2001 to 2017, serving as the president of the Columbus, Ohio Federalist Society chapter in 2005 and 2006.
- Longtime member of the right-wing Republican National Lawyers Association (“RNLA”), from 2004 to 2017.
Key Cases and Rulings
Here are some of the key cases and rulings involving Judge Chad Readler:
| Case Name | Court | Year | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| McQuiggin v. Perkins | Supreme Court of the United States | N/A | Readler successfully argued on behalf of a pro bono client claiming actual innocence. |
| Davenport v. MacLaren, 975 F.3d 537 (6th Cir. 2020) | Sixth Circuit | 2020 | A panel of the Sixth Circuit vacated the first-degree murder conviction of Earl Davenport. |
| United States v. Wooden, 945 F.3d 498 (6th Cir. | Sixth Circuit | N/A | N/A |
In Davenport v. MacLaren, 975 F.3d 537 (6th Cir. 2020), a panel of the Sixth Circuit vacated the first-degree murder conviction of Earl Davenport, a man accused of strangling Annette White.
The Sixth Circuit voted 8 to 7 against rehearing the case en banc. In United States v. Wooden, 945 F.3d 498 (6th Cir.
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