Paul Austin Crotty (born April 1, 1941) is a

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of the

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. Early in his career, he worked as a lawyer at

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, and in the 1980s he was Commissioner of New York City's Office of Financial Services, as well as Finance Commissioner and commissioner for Housing Preservation & Development. He was nominated by President

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to a seat on the

in 2005.

Early life and education

Paul A. Crotty was born in Buffalo,

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in 1941 to Margaret and Peter Crotty. His father, Peter J. Crotty, was the son of an immigrant longshoreman. Peter Crotty was a lawyer and a politician. The family consisted of six brothers and a daughter; all six of the family's sons became lawyers, including Paul. Crotty received a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

degree from the

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in 1962 and a

Bachelor of Laws A Bachelor of Laws (; LLB) is an undergraduate law degree offered in most common law countries as the primary law degree and serves as the first professional qualification for legal practitioners. This degree requires the study of core legal subje ...

from

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in 1967. He was also in the

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from 1962 to 1968.

Career

He was a

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to Judge Lloyd Francis MacMahon of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, from 1967 to 1969. Crotty entered private practice in

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at the prominent law firm of

, working there as an associate from 1969 to 1976, and then as a partner from 1976 to 1984, and from 1988 to 1993. In 1973, he lost a Democratic primary for City Council in on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. In February 1984, he was appointed Commissioner of the city's Office of Financial Services, and later that year became Finance Commissioner. From 1984 to 1988, he held several government positions in the Office of Financial Services for the City of New York. He was a commissioner in that office in 1984, and then Commissioner of Finance from 1984 to 1986, and a commissioner for Housing Preservation & Development until 1988. After having returned to private practice for a time, he became the

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from 1994 to 1997, and group president for the New York and Connecticut region for

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from 1997 to 2005.

Federal judicial service

On February 14, 2005, Crotty was nominated by President

to a seat on the

vacated by

Harold Baer Jr. Harold Baer Jr. (February 16, 1933 – May 27, 2014) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Early life and education Born in New York City, New York, Baer received his Bac ...

Crotty was confirmed by the

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on April 11, 2005, and received his commission on April 15, 2005. He assumed senior status on August 1, 2015.

Notable rulings

In April 2014, he ruled on a federal case involving caps on contributions to independent political-action committees in New York. In the case, he ruled the state's $150,000 limit on individual donations to the "super PACs" could be held in light of the 2010 Citizens United ruling. In 2018, in response to a 2017 immigration change by the Trump administration, he ruled that "the government acted unlawfully by requiring unaccompanied immigrant children to remain detained until an agency's director personally approved their release, a process that delayed their freedom and caused suffering." He also granted class-action status to the legal action that civil rights lawyers for the

New York Civil Liberties Union The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) is a civil rights organization in the United States. Founded in November 1951 as the New York affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, it is a not-for-profit, nonpartisan organization with nearly ...

had filed on behalf of one child. According to the NYCLU, about 700 children had been subject to the policy that Crotty struck down, with some detained over a year. Also in 2018, he ruled against the detainment by ICE of a pizza delivery man, who had been arrested while delivering food to a Brooklyn army base. He granted a stay of deportation while the man pursued permanent residency. In 2020, he presided on ''Melendez v. Sirius XM Radio Inc'', a lawsuit by

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of the ''Howard Stern'' show against

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, dismissing it in June 2021. After overseeing the original trial, in 2020, he oversaw the retrial of a former CIA software engineer, Joshua Schulte, accused of leaking secrets through WikiLeaks, in an espionage case. In 2020, he allowed the defendant to represent himself. In 2022, he was the judge in a case challenging New York Mayor

Eric Adams Eric Leroy Adams (born September 1, 1960) is an American politician and former police officer who has served as the 110th mayor of New York City since 2022. Adams was an officer in the New York City Transit Police and then the New York City P ...

' plan to take mentally ill homeless people to hospitals against their will. In May 2022, as Senior U.S. District Judge Paul A. Crotty of the Southern District of New York, he granted an injunction to the Upsolve legal advice program, arguing their right to offer legal advice was likely protected by the First Amendment. In 2023, he oversaw the sexual lawsuit case against Cuba Gooding Junior, which was settled before going to trial.

Personal life

As of 1984, he lived in Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan.

References

Sources

*
Paul A. Crotty Resume
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crotty, Paul Austin 1941 births Living people Cornell Law School alumni Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York Lawyers from Buffalo, New York Military personnel from Buffalo, New York United States district court judges appointed by George W. Bush University of Notre Dame alumni