On August 21, 2023, Natasha C. Merle was sworn in as a U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of New York. Judge Merle recently spoke with the Federal Bar Council Quarterly about her career and her journey to the bench.
Judge Merle grew up in Houston, Texas, with her two older siblings. Her mother is from St. Kitts and her father is from Jamaica, New York, with Puerto Rican and Panamanian roots. Her parents met in St. Croix and, due to her father’s military status, eventually relocated to Maine, where Judge Merle was born. Soon thereafter, Judge Merle’s family settled in Houston.
Judge Merle studied Spanish and government at the University of Texas at Austin, graduating with cum laude honors in 2005. She then earned her law degree from New York University in 2008. Judge Merle notes that she did not have a predetermined path to law school. In fact, she had not even met a lawyer until she attended law school. It was the encouragement of college professors and Judge Merle’s desire to help people that led her to pursue a legal career. “I saw the criminal justice system’s impact on my family and friends and the lack of resources in my community,” she reflected. While she could have served as a teacher or a social worker, she began a career as a legal advocate based on the belief that “the legal system, if used for good, could help a wide array of people from different communities.”
Advocating for Civil Rights
After graduating from law school, Judge Merle served as a law clerk from 2008-09 to the late Southern District of New York Judge Robert L. Carter. After her clerkship, Judge Merle concentrated her practice on death penalty work for over four years. From 2009-11, she was a staff attorney and Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Gulf Region Advocacy Center, where she provided capital defense to indigent defendants facing the death penalty. Thereafter, from 2011-12, she served as an assistant federal public defender in the Capital Habeas Unit at the Federal Public Defender for the District of Arizona.
Judge Merle recounts a particular client visit early in her career that brought to the forefront the myriad of systemic issues impacting marginalized communities. During this visit with one of her clients who had been sentenced to death, Judge Merle realized that not only did many of her clients know each other before incarceration, but they came from the same communities and had the same stories. “It became clear to me that there was a larger systemic issue.” This observation prompted Judge Merle to turn next to impact litigation in her legal career.
LDF Impact Litigation
From 2012-13, Judge Merle returned to New York to complete a second clerkship, this time for District Judge John Gleeson on the Eastern District of New York, the same courthouse where she is now a federal judge. From 2013-15, Judge Merle worked as an associate and civil rights fellow at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP, where she handled complex commercial litigation. She also worked on numerous pro bono matters, which afforded her extensive litigation experiences, including the opportunity to argue in administrative proceedings and New York state courts, and take depositions. Judge Merle encourages junior attorneys to similarly pursue pro bono work to gain courtroom advocacy experience and skills. She also believes it is important for junior attorneys to surround themselves with mentors who believe in them and are invested in their success starting early in their legal careers.
In 2016, Judge Merle joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF), where she handled death penalty, education and voting rights litigation. She rose up the ranks, holding the positions of Fellow from 2016-18; assistant counsel in 2018; senior counsel from 2018-21; and finally, deputy director of litigation from 2021 until her appointment to the federal bench in 2023. Judge Merle also served as an adjunct professor of clinical law and lecturer in law at New York University School of Law and Columbia Law School, respectively.
Judge Merle observes that one of the most significant LDF matters she worked on was the representation of Duane Buck. Buck had been sentenced to death in Texas after his own attorney presented expert testimony that he was more likely to be a future danger because he is Black. LDF challenged this error, which made Buck’s race directly pertinent on the question of life or death. In Buck v. Davis, 580 U.S. 100 (2017), the U.S. Supreme Court held, inter alia, that Buck received inadequate assistance of counsel when his attorney introduced evidence that he was more likely to be a future danger because of his race, and that it was reasonably probable that without this testimony he may not have been sentenced to death.
In an opinion that has left a lasting impact on Judge Merle, the Supreme Court noted that dispensing punishment based in part on an immutable characteristic “is a disturbing departure from a basic premise of our criminal justice system: Our law punishes people for what they do, not who they are.” Id. at 123.
On the Bench
Judge Merle joins the Eastern District court after over 15 years as an advocate. She speaks positively about her transition to the bench. She praises her staff and the collegiality of her judicial colleagues, who have provided helpful guidance. She is also grateful for her varied experience in all stages of criminal and civil litigation – including the initial pleading and discovery stages, motion practice, trials, and appeals throughout federal courts, including the Supreme Court – that prepared her for this new role. Among other lessons gained during her now one-year tenure on the bench, Judge Merle has learned that it is okay, and indeed preferable, to take the time and ask all the questions necessary to “get [the answer] right” before rendering decisions. For Judge Merle, the bottom line is to administer justice impartially and treat litigants with kindness, respect and dignity.
Different Paths to the Bench
It is believed that Judge Merle is the first former public defender appointed to the Eastern District in 30 years. She also joins the ranks of an esteemed group of LDF attorneys who later served as judges, including the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall; the late Judge Carter of the Southern District of New York, who worked alongside Justice Marshall at LDF and for whom Judge Merle clerked; and the late Southern District of New York Judge Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to serve as a federal judge. Following Justice Marshall, Judge Merle is only the second attorney to be appointed directly from LDF to the federal bench, a recognition she describes as humbling. “To even have my name mentioned in the same sentence as Justice Marshall is overwhelming,” she reflected. It is also important because “it shows young attorneys that there are different paths to the bench, if that is a goal of theirs. There is not a single path to becoming a judge.”
Judge Natasha C. Merle