Brian M. Feldman
Senator Charles E. Schumer aptly noted that, while U.S. District Judge Meredith Anne Vacca is a “true blue Western New Yorker,” she brings a “unique perspective” to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York. She is the court’s first Asian-American judge – indeed, its first non-white district judge – and only its second female district judge. She comes to the bench enriched by her service as a state court judge and prosecutor, along with the grit of a former college ice hockey player and the focus and resilience of a longtime figure skater. She owns her uniqueness: “I’ll do it my way.”
President Joseph R. Biden nominated Judge Vacca on May 14, 2024, to the seat on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York in Rochester vacated by now-Senior U.S. District Judge Frank Paul Geraci, Jr. The Senate confirmed Judge Vacca on July 31, 2024. The next day, Judge Vacca received her commission. And by the following Monday, Chief Judge Elizabeth Wolford administered the oath of office to Judge Vacca. So, the first woman to serve as a U.S. district judge in the district swore in the second to do so.
“Big Italian Family”
Judge Vacca was raised in what she describes as a “big, fun-loving, Italian-American family” in Greece, New York, outside of Rochester. Yet she was born in Busan, South Korea. She and her twin sister, Lea, were adopted from an orphanage in Busan by their Western New York parents around the age of six months. The judge’s parents wanted the judge to have a connection to her Korean heritage, so they brought her to Camp Chin-Gu, a Korean Culture Camp in Rochester, where she could connect with other children adopted from South Korea and learn more about the culture. The judge’s experience, however, was classic Italian-American, with large family gatherings and cooking sauce with grandma on Sunday. Her adopted family and culture are so important to her identity that the judge retained her family surname – Vacca – even after marriage.
Growing up in the Vacca household, the judge had role models in the law and in pursuing her passions. Her father, Paul Vacca, worked in the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office and after that has had a private legal practice, including criminal defense. The judge fondly remembers her father’s stories about his time as a prosecutor. The judge’s mother was every bit as successful: Carolyn Vacca, a college professor, leads the humanities department at St. John Fisher University, a Catholic liberal arts college in Rochester.
The judge was raised Catholic and attended Catholic schools. For primary school, she attended Nazareth Hall. And for high school, she attended the all-girls Nazareth Academy, the oldest Catholic high school in Rochester, which has since closed.
“Skating Was My Life”
Before the judge found her calling in the law, she found her passion on the ice. She and her sister were competitive figure skaters in their youth. Skating was constant. She would start at 5:00 a.m. before school, pick it up again after school, and skate yet again on the weekend, usually starting at 6:00 a.m. “It was my life,” she explains. She loved the sport and worked hard at it, but she rarely found herself with the top score. That humbled her and taught her grit and resilience, lessons that have stayed with her.
In high school, the judge added hockey to the mix. She came from a “hockey family,” with both her father and brother playing the sport. When a local girls team opened, she joined. The judge continued playing hockey at Colgate University, where she was a philosophy major.
The judge dialed back her skating in her junior year, when she studied abroad in Scotland. She attended the University of St Andrews, the third-oldest university in the English-speaking world, founded in 1413 by a group of Augustinian clergy. She loved her time there. And, while she is not a golfer, she strolled by the Old Course at St Andrews, golf’s birthplace, every day and found it “breathtakingly quaint.” When she returned from St Andrews, the judge shifted to intramural hockey at Colgate – on a team she helped start.
A Serious Prosecutor
The judge’s professor-mother, not her lawyer-father, planted the seed of a legal career in the judge’s head. Her father studiously avoided pressuring the judge into the law. But her mother could see that the judge would enjoy and succeed in a legal career. After ruling out a future as a philosophy Ph.D., the judge took the LSAT and began to plot her path as a lawyer.
She knew from the outset that she wanted to do public service and practice in her hometown of Rochester, New York. Attending law school at the University of Buffalo School of Law set her up to do both. During her 1L summer, she interned for U.S. District Judge Charles J. Siragusa in the federal courthouse in Rochester. (A handful of years later, Judge Siragusa would rule that Judge Vacca’s hometown of Greece, New York, did not violate the First Amendment by opening its meetings with a brief prayer – a decision affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Town of Greece, New York v. Galloway, 572 U.S. 565 (2014).) During her 2L summer, she interned at the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York. In addition to those experiences, the judge also interned at the Office of the New York Attorney General.
After graduating, the judge spent two years in private practice and then quickly found her way into public service. She was sworn in as an assistant district attorney in the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office in 2007. She stayed there for thirteen years and tried forty felony trials.
As a prosecutor, the judge did not shy away from difficult cases. She tried the most serious cases, including homicides. She was most passionate about working with children. For ten years, she worked in the Domestic Violence and Child Abuse Bureau. Those cases, she explains, “motivated [her] the most.”
Judicial Experience
As passionate as she was about being a prosecutor, Judge Vacca would come to find that her greatest passion is serving as a judge. For most of her life, that notion never even crossed her mind. In Western New York, she did not see judges who looked like her, so she never pictured herself in robes. Her mindset changed when Judge Cristopher S. Ciaccio, a Monroe County judge, called her into his chambers. He told her she would make a great judge. Judge Vacca was dumbfounded by the out-of-the-blue suggestion. But then she asked herself, “Why not me?”
That led her to talk to others about judging and about the path to the bench. In November 2020, she was elected to the Monroe County Court, where she began serving as a judge in January 2021. In 2023, Judge Vacca also served as an acting justice on the Monroe County Supreme Court. Her busy docket included significant criminal work and thirty jury trials.
The judge loved her service on the bench. It is, she says, what she feels she was “meant to do.” The only job she would consider taking to leave the state bench was as a U.S. district court judge. That offer came in mid-2024. She enthusiastically accepted it and succeeded in securing Senate confirmation – which she ended up watching on vacation from the Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island, and celebrating at her hotel’s Dunkin Donuts.
The district court welcomed her immediately, with Chief Judge Wolford praising her “hard work and dedicated commitment to the justice system” and “vast experience from her years in the district attorney’s office and on the state court bench.”
“The Highest Praise”
Judge Vacca has nothing but the highest praise for her court and its staff. Beginning with Chief Judge Wolford, the entire court has welcomed her with open arms. Judge Vacca says she “could not ask for a better court.” She is particularly grateful to Chief Judge Wolford for not overloading her with a full docket immediately.
The judge’s current docket is a mix of civil and criminal cases, both in Rochester and Buffalo. Although the civil cases are more numerous, more of her court time is spent on the criminal cases. Given her criminal law background, she is comfortable with criminal cases, including sentencing. She is learning more about federal civil cases, which she currently finds the most challenging part of her docket.
Appearing Before the Judge
For lawyers appearing before her, the judge expects attorneys to come prepared, be on time, and answer her questions. The court is busy, and the judge works hard not to waste time. When the judge holds argument, she has already read the papers. She will give attorneys an opportunity to speak, but she usually has specific questions that she wants them to answer. If a lawyer does not know an answer, they can always ask for an opportunity to answer in writing later. But the judge cautions that dodging questions and avoiding addressing weaknesses in a case undermines a lawyer’s position.
Judge Vacca is self-consciously herself on the bench. Her personality is chiseled in the ice of all those early mornings when she humbly worked on her figure skating. She is patient. She is calm. She is respectful to those who come before her. She tries hard not to scare anyone or put on airs. She hopes lawyers and litigants see that she is “human too.”
Senator Schumer put it best: “Judge Vacca has every quality you could possibly want in a jurist: tremendous expertise, sharp legal acumen, deep institutional knowledge, and a genuine love for her community.” Judge Vacca “has earned a stellar reputation as a knowledgeable, hardworking, and prepared judge of high moral integrity who manages her courtroom grounded in respect, fairness, discipline, and compassion.” Put differently, in Judge Vacca’s characteristically modest telling, she is simply a judge who intends to be true to her oath while remaining true to herself.
