On February 18, 2020, the U. S. District Court hosted an African American History Month program entitled After the Middle Passage: The American Slave Trade from 1808 to 1865.  The program focused on the U.S. domestic slave trade and spoke to New Orleans’ role as the largest slave market in antebellum America.  It was presented by historian Erin Greenwald, Vice-President of Content at the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and Curator of the Historic New Orleans Collection’s Purchased Lives. To complement the presentation, the Historic New Orleans Collection provided its Purchased Lives traveling exhibit.  The impeccably designed exhibit consisted of 5 banners with front and back representations of artwork, documents, artifacts, and other materials unique to the American slave trade.  The program was well-attended by attorneys, state and federal judges, and other members of the legal community.  The court thanks the following agencies and organizations that helped plan the event:  GNO Louis A. Martinet Society, Association for Women Attorneys, Federal Bar Association, New Orleans Bar Association, EDLA Federal Public Defender’s Office, EDLA United States Attorney’s Office, and EDLA United States Probation Office.

Hard-working, highly organized, extremely knowledgeable, disciplined, and experienced, all are attributes of William (“Bill”) Blevins who served as the Clerk of the Court for the United States District Court for Eastern District of Louisiana (“EDLA”) from May, 2013, when he was selected to be the Clerk following the retirement of Loretta Whyte, until January, 2020.  During his over six and one-half year tenure in the Eastern District of Louisiana, Bill’s leadership and skilled management moved the Clerk’s Office forward in such diverse areas as Information Technology/Systems, Financial Administration and Budget, Shared Administrative Services, and Operations.  He worked with three Chief Judges in the Eastern District of Louisiana, including current Chief Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown, who became Chief Judge in 2018, District Judge Sarah S. Vance who served as Chief Judge from 2008 to 2015, and who was serving as Chief Judge when Bill was appointed Clerk of Court in 2013, and Circuit Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, formerly EDLA District Judge and EDLA Chief Judge from 2015 to 2018.     During Bill’s long and distinguished career with the Judiciary, he has served as the Chief Deputy Clerk for the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the Clerk of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern and Western Districts of Arkansas, and for the twelve years preceding his term in the Eastern District of Louisiana, Clerk of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Florida.  A native of Norfolk, Virginia, and former resident of Richmond, Virginia, Bill earned both a B.A. and an M.B.A. from the University of Richmond.  Bill and his wife, Malinda, have four adult children.  On January 6, 2020, Bill returned home to Richmond, Virginia, where many members of his and his wife’s family reside, to serve as the Chief Deputy Clerk of Operations for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Bill shepherded to successful completion an astonishing number of updates, upgrades, new projects, initiatives, transitions and changes, touching virtually every unit in the operations, technological, and administrative areas of the office.  He was responsive to the requests and needs of the judges but also implemented programs to meet staff needs. He provided superb mentoring and advice to his staff and deeply cared about the court and doing the very best job that he could.  He and his family became true New Orleanians, participating fully in the unique culture of our city.  We wish him the very best as he and Malinda move back home to Virginia.  He will be sorely missed. (*A full length version of this article is featured in the current (Winter 2020, Vol.  29, No. 2) issue of the New Chapter of the Federal Bar Association’s Advocate.)  

Pursuant to Local Civil Rule 83.2.2(D), every attorney admitted to practice before the Eastern District of Louisiana must pay an annual fee which is collected every third year.  Commencing January 1, 2020, the Court will collect triennial dues of $45.00 ($15.00 per year for 2020, 2021 and 2022) from all attorneys admitted to this Court's bar. No later than March 1, 2020, all attorneys admitted to the bar of this Court will be required to pay their triennial attorney's dues electronically. Instructions on electronic payment of dues can be found here. On November 12, 2019, the Eastern District of Louisiana implemented CM/ECF NextGen and since that date, to file in CM/ECF attorneys must have linked their CM/ECF account to their individual PACER account. Instructions on linking can be found here.  

On December 19, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana held a naturalization ceremony in which 53 candidates were naturalized as United States citizens.  The Honorable Dana M. Douglas, U.S. Magistrate Judge for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, presided over the ceremony.  Candidates originated from 31 different countries, exemplifying the truly diverse character of the American people.   Attorney Brandon Davis served as the keynote speaker.  In his speech, Attorney Davis called on candidates to “move on to the hard work of active citizenship” and described America as “a place where we can be a part of something bigger, a place where we can contribute our talents and fulfill our ambitions and secure new opportunity for ourselves and for others, a place where we can retain pride in our heritage but where we can recognize that we have a common creed, a loyalty to these documents, a loyalty to our democracy, where we can criticize our government but understand that we love it, where we agree to live together even when we don’t agree with each other, where we work through the democratic process and not through violence or sectarianism to resolve disputes, where we live side by side as neighbors, and where our children know themselves to be a part of this nation, no longer strangers, but the bedrock of this nation, the essence of this nation.” Following Attorney Davis’s moving and heartfelt speech, the candidates announced their names and countries of origin and swore allegiance to the United States, thereby becoming United States citizens.  After the ceremony, the New Orleans Chapter of the League of Women Voters provided new citizens with voter registration applications, encouraging them to take advantage of their newly minted right to vote.   Ceremony photographs may be accessed by selecting this link.(Part A, Part B)