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| Lauren J. King |
The two sisters as young girls saw their mother get shipped off to an Indian boarding school for a time and then watched as she died while receiving inadequate care in an Indian Health Service facility, according to King.
"My grandmother, Anna Jacobs, told me that after seeing her mother's experience in the IHS facility, she thought she could take care of people better than that. So she decided to become a nurse and proudly served in the U.S. Army in the Korean War," King said.
And, King added, when her grandmother died in 2014, her father found a letter among her things that she had written to a friend but had not yet sent, talking about a case that King was litigating and saying how proud she was.
"That meant the world to me," King told Law360 in a recent interview. "Just like she served her country, I'm proud to serve my country."
When King in December becomes the first Native American federal judge in Washington state's history, the dual citizen of the United States and the Muscogee Nation expects she'll also be thinking of her ancestors who survived the U.S. government's forced relocation of Indians on the Trail of Tears during the 19th century.
King says she often thinks of her family members' years of work in tribal government, going back to her great-grandfather, John Jacobs, an early lawyer for the tribe who served in the Muscogee Nation's House of Kings and House of Warriors, and her great-aunt Irene Cleghorn, a Creek citizen from Holdenville, Oklahoma, who was the first woman to serve on the Muscogee Nation Council.
"People very much remember her, to the point that when I was being sworn in at the Muscogee (Creek) Nation District Court, the judge made a point to say, 'Her great-aunt is Irene Cleghorn,'" King recalled. "And I can't omit my grandmother, Anna Jacobs. My ancestors truly lived up to a saying we have in Native America, that we should devote our lives to protect and benefit the next seven generations."
Following a filing of cloture by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on King's nomination, the U.S. Senate in a 55-44 vote on Oct. 5 confirmed President Joe Biden's nomination of 39-year-old King to serve as a U.S. district judge for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. According to the district, once King takes her oath she'll be only the second Native American in the U.S. courts for the Ninth Circuit, and the fourth active Native American federal judge throughout the United States.
King is one of three nominees added to the district this year — after a large gap with no new judges joining the court since 2007 — and expects to take her oath on Dec. 15.
Chief Judge Ricardo S. Martinez of the Western District noted that Biden's "historic appointment" of King recognizes that Washington state has 29 federally recognized Native American tribes who rely on the court system.
"Her confirmation by the Senate not only serves to increase public confidence in the impartiality and inclusiveness of the federal courts but also enhances the administration of justice in our community," Judge Martinez said in a statement.
King is a principal at Foster Garvey PC in Seattle, where she has a litigation practice focused on Native American treaty rights cases and matters involving protection of sacred sites, as well as intellectual property matters and commercial and construction disputes. The law firm said in a statement that it wishes her great success in her career on the federal bench, and commends her "intellectual acumen, legal experience and dedication to justice."
She says she will leave Foster Garvey within the next couple of months and is currently putting her files in order and turning over her practice to other lawyers while also reaching out to federal judges for guidance and studying materials offered through the U.S. federal courts' Federal Judicial Center.
"We will get cases assigned on day one," King said. "The typical practice when a new judge starts is to reassign existing cases, especially in districts like ours that have judicial emergencies and a strong need for judges to handle the large caseload."
Born in Oklahoma City, King received her bachelor's degree from the University of Washington in 2004 and her law degree in 2008 from the University of Virginia School of Law, where she was editor-in-chief of the Virginia Journal of Law and Technology. Before working at Foster Garvey, she was an associate at boutique firm Byrnes Keller Cromwell LLP and K&L Gates LLP in Seattle.
Before her nomination to the Western District of Washington, King says she chaired the longest treaty rights trial ever in the district, in a subproceeding in U.S. v. Washington
, and successfully defended the trial victory protecting commercial fishers' interests before the Ninth Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court.She also has served as a pro tem appellate judge for the Northwest Intertribal Court System since 2013, and says that experience helped her win her federal court nomination.
"The tribes have their own laws and criteria for being a judge, whether at the trial or appellate level, and they can therefore pick and choose which judges meet those qualifications out of the Northwest Intertribal Court System stable," King said. "I very much enjoyed being a judge, engaging counsel at oral arguments and engaging with interesting briefs and difficult legal issues and acting as a neutral. That was one of the things that led me to want to be a judge on the federal level."
Also key to King's decision to seek a federal judgeship was a magistrate judge's suggestion years ago that she look into becoming a judge after she led a two-week mediation on behalf of a client back when she was a second-year associate. And another judge encouraged King when she took part in the Washington Leadership Institute.
King said she believed at first that federal judge candidates must know people in power, but that initial impression was wrong. She noted that the application for vacant positions is published online on the Western District of Washington's website. And Washington senators have established a bipartisan judicial merit selection committee to screen and interview candidates, which then recommends candidates to the senators for consideration, she said.
"People think it's prohibitively difficult to become a judge. That was my reaction at the time," King said. "It was a mystery to me. I laughed to myself and thought, 'Oh, yeah, I'm going to get a presidential nomination.' I thought you have to know people in power, senators and the president, and that wasn't me. These judges were sensitive to that and encouraging people who would not otherwise think about serving the public in this way."
--Editing by Michael Watanabe.
Update: This article has been updated to include additional information about the process of becoming a federal judge.
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