The Legal Accountability Project Files Judicial Misconduct Complaint Against Second Circuit Judge Sarah Merriam
Tuesday, December 30, 2025
For Immediate Release
Contact: Aliza Shatzman, 267-481-2095, aliza.shatzman@legalaccountabilityproject.org
The Legal Accountability Project Files Judicial Misconduct Complaint Against Second Circuit Judge Sarah Merriam
On December 18, 2025, The Legal Accountability Project (“LAP”) took a significant step toward real judicial accountability, filing its first judicial misconduct complaint against Judge Sarah Merriam, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Connecticut. Judge Merriam served as a federal trial court judge for less than a year before she was elevated to the U.S. Court of Appeals, the nation’s second highest court, in September 2022. LAP’s complaint is the second complaint filed against Judge Merriam in fewer than four years. To the best of LAP’s knowledge, LAP’s complaint is the first instance in which a federal judge has been publicly reprimanded by the court for mistreating law clerks, only to engender a second misconduct complaint for continuing to mistreat clerks in violation of the federal judiciary’s own workplace policies.
In December 2023, the Second Circuit issued a decision on a complaint from one of Judge Merriam’s law clerks who indicated that he could no longer work for Judge Merriam because of how she treated her staff. At that time, Judge Merriam committed to taking several steps to remedy the “overly harsh” work environment.
Since the Second Circuit issued its order on the first complaint, LAP received troubling corroborated information from several former clerks alleging that Judge Merriam continues to mistreat clerks. As part of LAP’s mission to ensure positive judicial clerkship experiences, support mistreated clerks, and fight for safe judiciary work environments, LAP has a duty to bring these allegations to the Court’s attention.
“With this complaint, LAP takes an active step to challenge both congressional intransigence and judicial branch inaction,” said LAP’s President and Founder Aliza Shatzman. Shatzman added, “LAP has spent close to four years urging the judiciary to make meaningful reforms to ensure safe judicial workplaces, free from discrimination and harassment, and to empower mistreated law clerks to blow the whistle on judges. LAP has also repeatedly urged Congress to conduct oversight over the courts and to enact legislation that would finally extend Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and whistleblower protections to more than 30,000 judicial branch employees, who are currently not covered by basic civil rights laws that protect employees’ constitutional rights.”
There were just three judicial misconduct complaints filed by law clerks in the period ending in September 2023 (of which the first complaint against Judge Merriam was one); and just two in the period ending in September 2024. Yet the judiciary’s own workplace climate survey, conducted in 2023, revealed that as many as 106 judges (around 1 in 17) mistreated their clerks in 2023. LAP believes that this discrepancy—106 abusive judges, but only three complaints—is due to broken complaint processes that discourage complaints, a lack of workplace protections, actions by judiciary officials that chill complaints, and a system that makes it incredibly difficult for clerks—who typically lack legal representation—to navigate the byzantine judicial complaint process themselves.
“LAP is filing this complaint because it can afford to take the risk that law clerks cannot. LAP has strength in numbers that a law clerk standing alone does not have,” explained Shatzman. “We’ve spent the past several years encouraging every mistreated clerk who reaches out to LAP to file a complaint. Yet clerks tell us routinely that they have not and will not file complaints, because they do not believe their concerns will be taken seriously nor robustly, impartially investigated.”
To be clear: law clerks are not legally protected against retaliation under Title VII. Sadly, the judiciary has shown a staggering unwillingness to take judicial misconduct seriously and hold judges accountable for their behavior. The judiciary vociferously opposes the Judiciary Accountability Act (JAA) and other efforts to extend Title VII protections to judicial branch employees, insisting they can effectively “self-police”—which they clearly cannot, given the situation in Judge Merriam’s chambers and in other chambers currently under investigation. The judiciary also laughably insists the negligible number of clerk complaints filed annually indicates a lack of misconduct when, in reality, it most likely indicates ineffective or nonexistent complaint processes. Given the judiciary’s general unwillingness to take clerk complaints seriously in the past, clerks have been given no reason to believe that if they stick their necks out and blow the whistle, they will be believed, let alone protected from having powerful judges destroy their careers.
“It would be a stain on the judiciary to shield Judge Merriam from accountability under these circumstances,” LAP’s complaint concludes. LAP looks forward to participating in a thorough investigation of this second complaint. LAP urges the Court to take meaningful steps to ensure that the clerks Judge Merriam mistreated are empowered to safely participate in the investigation without fear of retaliation. Given that these problems persist in Judge Merriam’s chambers even after she was disciplined, stronger remedies are necessary to protect law clerks and the public.