Amit Mehta

Amit Priyavadan Mehta (born 1971) is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and a Judge on the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Biography

Amit Priyavadan Mehta was born in 1971 in Patan, Gujarat, India.
Raised in Reisterstown, Maryland, Mehta graduated in 1989 from Franklin High School. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1993 from Georgetown University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. He received a Juris Doctor in 1997 from the University of Virginia School of Law, graduating Order of the Coif. He served as an associate at the law firm of Latham & Watkins from 1997 to 1998, leaving to clerk for Judge Susan P. Graber of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1998 to 1999. He served as an associate at the law firm of Zuckerman Spaeder, LLP from 1999 to 2002, and then as a staff attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia from 2002 to 2007. From 2007 to 2014 he rejoined Zuckerman Spaeder, serving as partner from 2010 to 2014. He represented clients in civil and criminal matters before state and federal courts.

Federal judicial service

On July 31, 2014, President Barack Obama nominated Mehta to serve as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, to the seat vacated by Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, who took senior status on June 3, 2014. He received a hearing before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary on September 17, 2014. On November 20, 2014 his nomination was reported out of committee by voice vote. On Saturday, December 13, 2014 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed a motion to invoke cloture on the nomination. On December 16, 2014, Reid withdrew his cloture motion on Mehta's nomination, and the Senate proceeded to vote to confirm Mehta in a voice vote. He received his federal judicial commission on December 19, 2014. Judge Sri Srinivasan of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals swore Mehta in on 19 June 2015. On June 1, 2021, Chief Justice John Roberts appointed Mehta to the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Mehta played a central role in the Steele Affair (2010-2022) concerning Dr. Brett D. Steele’s legal campaign in response to the violation of his civil and academic-freedom rights while an associate professor at National Defense University (NDU) in 2011 under the command of Vice-Admiral Ann E. Rondeau. It also involved the violent whistleblower retaliation he endured at NDU, as well as a federal campaign of obstruction of justice to defeat his legal actions. On 29 June 2016, Mehta ruled against all of Steele’s claims of age discrimination and retaliation at NDU in ''Steele v. Carter'' (2016). Mehta’s bias against Steele was manifested not only by ignoring or mischaracterizing the documented evidence of discrimination and overlooking the contradictory testimony of the DOD witnesses, but also by making false statements and legal claims. As a result, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned Mehta’s ruling in ''Steele v. Mattis'' (2018) in an opinion written by Judge Patricia Millett. The judges ruled that substantial evidence exists that Steele was terminated from NDU due to age discrimination, based especially on the hiring of young graduate students to take over Steele’s courses. They also pointed to the contradictory and shifting statements of the DOD witnesses concerning why Steele was terminated, as well as the ageist statements made by Steele’s department chair. Steele’s attorney
Donna Rucker
submitted such evidence and a lot more in the four-day bench trial in June 2019 that followed, where Mehta served as judge and jury. It culminated with Mehta himself criticizing the DOJ defense attorney Roberto Martens for failing to provide any documented evidence of the alleged DOD budget cuts that the designated legal representative of NDU, Col
Michael S. Bell
claimed had caused Adm. Rondeau to terminate Steele. Nevertheless, he ruled in favor of the DOD in ''Steele v. Esper'' (2019) where he affirmed yet again that Steele experienced no age discrimination at NDU. Steele then filed a second appeal to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals where Rucker, spelled out the documented evidence and contradictory testimony of the DOD witnesses that Mehta ignored, as well as the false statements he made to increase the plausibility of his trial verdict. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals judges, comprising Katanji Brown Jackson, Patricia Millett, and Robert Wilkins found sufficient merit in Steele’s second appeal to deny a motion for summary affirmance by the controversial DOJ defense attorney Jane Lyons and recommend the case get settled by mediation. According to Lyons, that option was vehemently rejected by military leaders of the Biden Administration due to ongoing anger over Steele’s whistleblowing complaints at NDU. Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan then replaced those judges with himself, as well as Judges Neomi Rao and Cornelia Pillard right before the oral argument on 9 February 2022. Despite confronting Lyons with documented evidence of DOD pretext, they ruled a month later that Mehta’s trial verdict was without error in the ''Steele v. Austin'' (2022) decision—a three-page legal decree that offered neither a formal legal opinion nor a basic weighing the evidence presented by Rucker. Such unwillingness to hold Mehta accountable for the substantial evidence of bias against Steele suggests the depth of the U.S. culture of military impunity as well as the toleration of age discrimination in the Biden Administration, despite the recent ''Babb v. Wilkie'' (2020) decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

In May 2019, Mehta ruled that accounting firm Mazars had to provide its records of Donald Trump's accounts from before his presidency to the House Oversight Committee in response to their subpoena. In a 41-page opinion, he asserted that Congress has the right to investigate potential illegal behavior by a president, including actions both before and after the president assumed office. The ruling will be appealed by Trump's personal legal team.

In July 2019, Mehta sided with the pharmaceutical firms Merck & Co., Eli Lilly & Co., and Amgen Inc. by blocking a Trump administration rule requiring drugmakers to put prices in television ads, a central part of the president's push to lower the cost of prescription medications. The goal of the rule was to increase transparency; Mehta ruled that requiring big pharmaceutical companies to disclose prices to consumers in television advertisements was something that could be done only by the Department of Health and Human Services if mandated by Congress.

As of 2022, Mehta is presiding over several cases related to the January 6 United States Capitol attack. He has charge of the criminal prosecution of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes for seditious conspiracy. He is also presiding over three civil lawsuits against former President Donald Trump and multiple associates, in which several congress members and two police officers are suing for damages for physical and emotional injuries they allegedly incurred during the attacks. On February 18, 2022, Mehta issued a lengthy opinion that rejected Trump's claim of "absolute immunity" from lawsuits, finding that his actions were not part of his presidential duties, and that there was plausible evidence to suggest he engaged in a conspiracy with organized groups to use any means, including violence, to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The opinion allows the case to proceed, with the plaintiffs demanding documents, depositions, and other evidence from Trump and members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. Mehta dropped several other co-defendants from the suit, including Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump Jr., and Representative Mo Brooks.

See also

*List of Asian American jurists

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Mehta, Amit Priyavadan
1971 births
21st-century American judges
American jurists of Indian descent
Georgetown University alumni
Judges of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia
Judges of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
Lawyers from Washington, D.C.
Living people
People from Reistertown, Maryland
People from Patan district
Public defenders
United States district court judges appointed by Barack Obama
University of Virginia School of Law alumni
Virginia lawyers