Judge Christopher Cooper
District of Columbia U.S. District Court
Christopher Reid “Casey” Cooper was born in September 1966 in Mobile, Alabama. He earned an undergraduate degree from Yale University and received a Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School. He clerked at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Cooper served as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice for two years before entering into the private practice of law.
He was nominated by President Barack Obama to serve as a judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He was confirmed by a 100-0 vote of the Senate and received his commission in March 2014.
Cooper is married to Amy Jeffries, a former Justice Department official.
In the News…
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts performs policy and administrative and legislative work on behalf of the federal court system. Until 2017, most of the 1,100 employees of the Administrative Office faced no restrictions on political activities outside of work. But in 2017, the office director announced changes to the agency’s code of conduct that, he said, would align the rules for administrative office employees with the regulations governing most federal courthouse employees.
But Judge Christopher Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ruled that the Administrative Office cannot curtail employees’ First Amendment rights on speech. Employees cannot be barred from making political contributions, attending campaign events, publicly supporting candidates and engaging in other political speech on their own time, he said.
The judge held that the Administrative Office can preclude employees from organizing campaign events and driving voters to the polls because those activities “evince particularly strong commitments to enlisting partisan support.” But otherwise, he said, employees’ bedrock First Amendment rights trump speculative concern that their political speech will taint perception of the judiciary’s impartiality.
Contact this Leader…
Did you pray for Judge Cooper today? You can let him know at:
The Honorable Judge Christopher R. Cooper
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
333 Constitution Ave NW
Washington, DC 20001
