For some time, I've heard rumors about unusual behavior from Judge Ada Brown in the Northern District of Texas. I was hesitant to write about the situation, because my information was incomplete and some of it was revealed in confidence. Now, the accusations are public, in part, because Judge Brown personally disclosed items to the press and others.

At the outset, let me praise the other members of the Northern District of Texas, and in particular, Chief Judge Reed O'Connor. They have picked up all of the cases that Judge Brown has not decided. These are very busy judges, and they have quietly assumed even more responsibilities to ensure the business of the court continues. Judge O'Connor has been routinely maligned by the press but he is a gracious and thoughtful member of his court who never seeks the spotlight. Indeed, it seems that Judge Brown has attacked Judge O'Connor, who has bent over backwards to help her. No good deed goes unpunished.

Moreover, I need to praise the leadership of Chief Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod. She has given Judge Brown every possible benefit of the doubt and made the process as transparent as possible. I need to contrast Chief Judge Elrod's performance with that of Chief Judge Moore in the Federal Circuit. Judge Newman has been subjected to a stealth impeachment through arbitrary one-year suspensions, and only after nearly two years was the case reassigned to another circuit. Judge Brown has been given shorter suspensions after she refused to decide cases. She has had every opportunity to make her case.

Now, onto the substance. There seems to be something seriously wrong with Judge Brown. Her behavior in court that has been reported in the press is extremely troubling. Her refusal to decide cases seems to be an abdication of her responsibility as a federal judge. And her unwillingness to participate in any disciplinary proceedings suggests something is amiss. I will hold off on opining on these issues in more depth, as I suspect more facts will come out.

Here, I want to focus on Judge Brown's behavior in court that gave rise to an ethics complaint earlier this year. Jacqueline Thomsen of Bloomberg Law, who has her finger on the pulse of the Fifth Circuit, offers the stunning details. Here is a summary:

A lawyer's misconduct complaint against US District Judge Ada Brown stemmed from a hearing during which she repeatedly directed racial insults at him, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg Law.

Attorney Ezra Young, who has represented a Black woman professor suing over a tenure denial, filed a complaint against Brown following the April 2026 hearing in Dallas, he confirmed in an interview with Bloomberg Law. Young's complaint and the judge's formal response were among the documents that Brown circulated in an Oct. 17 email to lawyers, judges, and members of the media.

Throughout the hearing, the judge, a Black woman with Native American ancestry, accused Young of mistreating Black attorneys, took "judicial notice" of her own background in making findings against Young, and repeatedly referred to Young, who is Latino, as being White. Brown called the hearing months after she revoked Young's ability to practice in her courtroom to weigh whether the lawyer should face sanctions.

"I think what's happening here, quite candidly, is you are very intimidated for some reason, Mr. Young, with Black excellence, in light of your White mediocrity. Yeah. Right?," Brown said, according to the transcript. "You should write that down. I mean, you — I'm — you look like a White man, right?"

"I'm not White, Your Honor," Young replied, adding that he's Latino.

"Well, you are White-presenting; is that fair to say?" Brown said, according to the transcript. Young said that he's "fair-skinned," and Brown said that Young had "White privilege" when he argued his client didn't receive key evidence in the case.

"You're the White savior, come to save all the stupid Black lawyers in Texas who need your help, from New York," Brown later said, according to the transcript. . . .

During the April 24, 2026 hearing, Brown accused Young of "racial bullying" toward Black attorneys in the case.

Brown also said that Young was acting like a "Chad," a term Young wasn't familiar with. The judge said it was the male version of a "Karen." "It's someone who calls the manager when they don't get their way. They stomp their foot when the rules are supposed to apply to them, right?" Brown said, according to the transcript. . . .

During the April hearing, Brown took issue with an article headline describing the case when it went before the Supreme Court of Texas. The article quoted a brief filed by Young that referenced another law professor apparently comparing what happened in the tenure denial to a "lynching."

The judge accused Young of making up that quote to "get a headline."

"And so when I read a headline — a sensationalized, very racialized headline that says, 'it's like I've been lynched,' and it's literally got no connection to this case, I have to ask you, Mr. Social Media, Main Character Chad, White Hero, Savior, Loves to Help Black People Be An Ally, where the lynching in this case came from?" Brown said, according to the transcript.

She also apparently gave Young a copy of a 1920 newspaper article that described a lynching. "So we don't find lynching jokes funny down here, sir," Brown said, according to the transcript.

The implication of Young's defense is that a Latino person cannot be racist against African Americans. That claim is wrong on its face, even under the misguided intersectionality pyramid. The bigger problem is that Young, a lifelong liberal, is unaccustomed to being called a racist.

Toward the end of the hearing, Young said that Brown seemed to be "using vicious stereotypes about White people, when I've repeatedly disclosed to this Court I am Latino."

He said that it appeared that Brown "is trying to tar and feather me for anti-Black animus, that has never been raised by anyone but this Court," according to the transcript.

"This Black woman?" Brown replied.

"No, Your Honor. This Court," Young responded.

Young later said he was "concerned that this Court has made light of my actual work as a civil rights lawyer." Brown asked Young what he has done for Black people, as she viewed his actions in the case toward Black attorneys as "abuse."

Young said he has gone "out of my way" to support the work of Black professors and others. When he described his interest in representing the plaintiff in the case, Brown cut him off.

"Can I pause and just tell you, I appreciate, on behalf of Black people, your White saviordom," Brown said.

"Your Honor, again, I'm not White," Young replied.

This is Ezra Young.

I'll let other people decide how "White presenting" Young is. Young has taught a class titled "Critical Race Theory, and Transgender People and the Law" at Cornell Law School. Young's scholarship "explores the rights of trans persons and is situated in the nascent field of critical trans theory." Young served as board secretary of the African American Policy Forum and was a founding board member of the National Trans Bar Association. Young's post doctoral studies focused on trans rights, Critical Race Theory, and intersectionality and were supervised by Kimberlé Crenshaw. Young is Admitted to practice in the Chickasaw Nation. In what universe can Judge Brown possibly claim Young is some sort of "white savior" who is hostile to black litigants?

Some people may be shocked at what Judge Ada Brown said in court, but the truth is that she is parroting standard dogma from Anti-Racists and Critical Racial Theorists. The charges may be completely absurd for someone like Ezra Young, but imagine the black plaintiff was represented by a white lawyer. Would that person be a "White Savior"? Think of the most famous white lawyer in American literature. Could even Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird be derided as a "White Savior"? Yes.

Welcome to the world of academia.

In 2015, Law Professor Osamudia R. James wrote an essay in the New York Times, titled Now We Can Finally Say Goodbye to the White Savior Myth of Atticus. Here is an excerpt:

Like many Americans, I read Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" as a high school student. In a curriculum devoid of explicit discussion about the impact of implicit and structural racism on both blacks and whites, the book stood out from the whitewashed reading list as one that directly engaged with the topic of race. It did so, however, in a matter quite conventional: Atticus Finch was the white savior, a good white liberal whose ethics and values compelled him to defend a black man who had been falsely accused of rape – and all this during a time when many whites would just as soon have lynched the accused without trial. Harper Lee won a Pulitzer Prize for tackling racial inequality, no surprise given how America likes its stories about race: centered on innocent white protagonists benevolently exercising power, with black characters relegated to the margins even in stories about their own oppression.

The anxiety and debate surrounding 'Watchman,' lets us re-examine white liberalism in literature and how it shapes our responses to racial injustice in real life.
Atticus Finch presented an enduring model to which many white liberals still cling. But besides being a fictional character, Atticus Finch is a myth. And a dangerous myth because he keeps good white liberals from reconsidering the fact that they live in white neighborhoods; from challenging administrators about the racial segregation of their children's schools or white supremacy advanced in the curriculum; or from acknowledging how they benefit from a system that keeps people of color laboring in their homes but excluded from their social and professional spaces. Like Finch, it is sufficient that they simply "do their best to love everybody."

Randall Kennedy used similar terms in an ABA Journal interview:

Though Watchman isn't Harper Lee's best work, Kennedy says, it "does reveal more starkly the complexity of Atticus Finch, her most admired character. Go Set a Watchman demands that its readers i and the mesmerizing performance of Gregory Peck in the film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird."

I searched the Westlaw Law Review database for "White Savior" /p Atticus and there were many such articles. Here is a sampling:

Add to that the concern that Atticus exemplifies a problematic white savior trope.31 The figure of a local lawyer, embedded in the local culture but nevertheless rising to the occasion of representing an unpopular defendant, is not only problematic but unsupported by the legal history, which was driven by those historic social movements.32 In her thoughtful piece examining this trope, Cynthia Bond notes, "[To Kill a Mockingbird] focuses on the radical individual as hero, essentially invisibilizing social movements that existed both during the 1930s, when the novel takes place, and the 1960s, when it was published." Sarah Gerwig-Moore, To Outgrow A Mockingbird: Confronting Our History-As Well As Our Fictions-About Indigent Defense in the Deep South, 54 Ga. L. Rev. 1297, 1302 (2020).

This "white savior" motif has become common in popular depictions of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s,94 and Atticus may be the prototypical white savior.95 The problem with idealizing the white savior is that it simply reinforces white empowerment, the same sort of white empowerment that resulted in the oppression which is now being resisted. The white savior motif deprives African-Americans of agency. The white savior motif has been recognized by critics who have characterized Atticus as a Christ figure, a man of exemplary virtue who sacrifices himself in order to save others, and there is support in the novel for this view of Atticus. Judy M. Cornett, Atticus Finch: Christian or Civic Hero? A Response to Professor Mcmillian, 77 Tenn. L. Rev. 723, 734 (2010)

Thus, as mere cinema, TKAM has great power for many viewers, including me. I too feel the power of the film's aesthetic and the pull of the idealized father figure, while simultaneously knowing that the film clings to the White Savior Frankian father. I don't teach the film so much despite of my own deep ambivalence about it, but rather because of it.55 But my main motivation in teaching TKAM is that many students respond to it as a film about the importance of social justice lawyering. Even students that do not see themselves pursuing public interest law frequently see Atticus as a model of selflessness and socially conscious legal practice. While I don't endorse the white savior heroism that lurks at the core of TKAM, I do want to encourage students to think about law as a social practice that impactslives. Cynthia D. Bond, To Kill A Lawyer-Hero: Atticus Finch in the Law School Classroom, 45 Rutgers L. Rec. 191, 204 (2018)

After considering this commentary, I began to wonder: What if a person of color had been included among my interviewees in "Does Popular Culture Influence Lawyers, Judges, and Juries?" Might that person have had a different opinion of Atticus and a different "greatest all-time movie" about lawyers?9 Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy describes the book as one about "the nobility of the white savior."10 Fighting words, perhaps, for the fans of To Kill a Mockingbird, but a valuable and different perspective for sure. Ronald M. Sandgrund, Esq., InQ., Can We Talk? Bias, Diversity, and Inclusiveness in the Colorado Legal Community, Colo. Law., February 2016, at 49, 59

The Atticus Finch Lee remade is indisputably an icon of American fiction, though even the Mockingbird character has his flaws. He can be criticized for his too-perfect principles and all-encompassing tolerance.224 With these qualities, he can be criticized for too passively accepting the status quo of segregation.225 Moreover the novel can fairly be taken to task as a "'white savior' story, except that Atticus Finch fails at saving Tom Robinson."226 Yet, many of these very weaknesses are traceable to the transformation Atticus undergoes between Watchman and Mockingbird. By definition, the Atticus who is a leader of the local White Citizens' Council chapter did not possess an all-encompassing tolerance. Mary Ellen Maatman, The Mockingbird's Brief, 47 Cumb. L. Rev. 85, 115 (2017)

To Kill a Mockingbird is an early example of what has come to be known as the white savior genre.96 Atticus Finch provides soothing confirmation that not all whites in the South are afflicted with "Maycomb's usual disease." For that he has been placed on a pedestal by To Kill a Mockingbird admirers who regard his platitudes with almost scriptural reverence.97 His exalted status rests in no small measure on a cultural myopia that undermines productive discussion of racial issues. It perpetuates the demeaning and false notion that blacks were submissive and passive in the face of the relentless cruelties of the Jim Crow South. They were not. Albert M. Pearson, Charles Hamilton Houston: Mockingbird with Talons, 61 How. L.J. 319, 333 (2018)

The film adaptation of real-life attorney Bryan Stevenson's memoir Just Mercy63 brings the issue of race-disparate mass incarceration and wrongful conviction to the screen. In doing so, it invokes uber white-savior lawyer Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird, the best known (albeit fictional) attorney in Maycomb, Alabama, which Harper Lee based on Monroeville, now home to Stevenson's Equal Justice Initiative.64 As Stevenson stresses in his memoir, Atticus' place in the civil rights hero pantheon is belied by the persistence of race-based discrimination in Monroeville's legal system:
Sentimentality about [author Harper] Lee's story grew even as the harder truths of [To Kill a Mockingbird] took no root. The story of an innocent black man bravely defended by a white lawyer in the 1930s fascinated millions of readers, despite its uncomfortable exploration of false accusations of rape involving a white woman …. Today, dozens of legal organizations hand out awards in the fictional lawyer's name to celebrate the model of advocacy described in Lee's novel. What is often overlooked is that the black man falsely accused in the story was not successfully defended by Atticus ….65 Cynthia D. Bond, Representations of Law and Race Revisited: An Updated Survey of Recent American Film, 30 U. Den. Sports & Ent. L.J. 51, 67 (2025).

Many lawyers and judges harbor the "anti-racist" views that Judge Brown spewed, but have the mental faculties to keep it private.

If Judge Brown leaves, or is removed from the bench, she would be right at home in virtually any faculty lounge. She could get another kind of lifetime tenure with ease!

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