Federal courts trumpet steps to protect workers after #MeToo movement
Source: NPR
November 20, 2024 4:34 PM ET
The federal courts have taken "extensive" steps to protect workers from abuse, discrimination and harassment since the rise of the #MeToo movement, by creating more paths to report misbehavior and offering a new training session for in-house investigators, U.S. District Judge Robert Conrad Jr. said Wednesday.
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which handles the judiciary's administration, reported that the overall number of complaints against federal judges remains small, with just three brought by judiciary employees under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act in the last fiscal year. Many more complaints are handled internally, through mediation, court leaders said.
"In some ways, we have more of a middle management problem than a judicial problem," said Conrad, who was named director of the Administrative Office earlier this year — pointing to statistics showing many complaints are not about judges per se but about other court employees.
However, some outside critics and former court employees say workers they've talked to don't trust the internal system and don't use it to report complaints, meaning any statistics are likely to be undercounted. Conrad said the courts are making "steady, sustained" progress toward tearing down barriers to report misconduct for the 30,000 people who work in their buildings — from judges and their staff, to federal public defenders.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2024/11/20/g-s1-35075/federal-courts-workplace-protection-metoo