Henderson, Thelton E.

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Thelton E. Henderson

1933—

Judge

U.S. District Judge Thelton Eugene Henderson has had a remarkable and often controversial career that began at the height of the civil rights struggle and culminated in a series of high-profile cases in California, where he has spent most of his life. Facing adversaries ranging from a club-wielding southern sheriff in the 1960s to outraged conservative lawmakers who called for his impeachment, Henderson has refused to back down. "I realize I'm controversial," he said, according to Harriet Chiang in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2005. "I take issues head-on. I don't try to skirt them."

Henderson was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, on November 28, 1933, but from the age of three he was raised in Los Angeles. It was his mother, a house cleaner, who put him on the road to his future career, telling him that he could go to college and insisting that he take the academic courses that would prepare him for it—even though he was a sports standout who could easily have relaxed with easier coursework and focused on the football field. "I shouldn't short-sell my father," Henderson told Harry Kreisler in the University of California Globetrotter in 1998. "He worked hard and paid the bills also. But my mother was the main educational influence, and I look back on her asking if my homework was done and making sure I did it."

Henderson's counselor and football coach at Jefferson High School steered him toward the University of California at Berkeley and helped him win a football scholarship to the school. He was small but fast, nicknamed Speedball, and for a while he dreamed of a career as a professional athlete. But a leg injury (after which he was helped off the field by California Governor and future U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren) ended his sports career. Henderson graduated from the University of California in 1956 and then, after two years in the U.S. Army, enrolled at the university's Boalt Hall School of Law.

Fought for Civil Rights

Although he did not enter law school with a commitment to the civil rights movement, his interest grew as the result of his participation in an African American Association student group that also included future U.S. Representative Ron Dellums and future Black Panther leader Huey Newton. After Henderson received his law degree in 1962, he was hired by the U.S. Justice Department as a prosecutor for voting rights cases in the still-segregated South. He was the first African-American attorney in the Justice Department's civil rights division. The job involved a good deal of direct evidence gathering as Henderson built cases against southern officials who worked to suppress black voter registration. "They all did it differently," Henderson recalled to Kreisler, "but the most prevalent pattern was that they'd have very difficult questions and then helped the whites answer the questions but didn't help the blacks. And so you could see answers from the whites in different handwritings that you knew were not their handwriting."

The work was dangerous indeed. Henderson received numerous death threats, and on one occasion a sheriff smashed his hand with a billy club after he handed the officer a driver's license in a plastic cover. Unable to find hotels where he could stay safely, he sometimes spent nights on military bases. Henderson spent two years with the Justice Department, but his career there came to an end when controversy flared after he lent his car to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.—as a government official he was supposed to maintain neutrality in pending cases. "I was shattered," he recalled to Chiang. "I felt a failure, just out of law school, my first job."

Henderson returned to California, worked for two years with an Oakland law firm, and then opened the East Bayshore Neighborhood Legal Center in the economically disadvantaged community of East Palo Alto, California. The center lasted only until 1969, but it opened the door to the next phase of Henderson's career: He had hired young lawyers from nearby Stanford University, and the school hired him in 1968 to recruit minority applicants to its law school. He served as an assistant dean at Stanford Law until 1977 and then returned to private practice as a partner with the firm of Rosen, Remcho and Henderson; in addition he taught at the Golden Gate University School of Law.

Nominated by President Carter

In early 1980 Henderson was approached by the administration of President Jimmy Carter, who had emphasized the appointment of minorities and women to federal judgeships. Henderson had to be talked into accepting by friends and associates, but on May 9, 1980, he was nominated by Carter to the vacant judgeship in the Northern District of California. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on June 26.

Henderson served as chief district judge from 1990 to 1997, remaining active and holding the post of chief judge emeritus after that. He took a special interest in civil rights, the environment, and prisoners' rights. Involved in a number of high-profile cases in his more than a quarter century on the federal bench, he selected several as especially noteworthy. The first occurred in 1989 in the case of Spain v. Rushen, in which he vacated the conviction of San Quentin prison inmate Johnny Spain—Spain had been forced to wear thirty pounds of chains every day of his trial, and Henderson ruled that that violated his constitutional right to a fair trial. Henderson's most famous case involving prisoners' rights was tried in 1995; in Madrid v. Gomez Henderson held, in a 344-page decision, that conditions at Pelican Bay State Prison violated protections spelled out in the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution on three separate counts.

Among Henderson's decisions pertaining to environmental laws was Citizens for a Better Environment v. Deukmejian (1990), in which he ruled that an environmental organization had the standing to bring a lawsuit against government agencies with the purpose of forcing them to enact clean-air measures. His decision in Earth Island Institute v. Mosbacher from the same year held that federal agencies had violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act by permitting the importation of yellowfin tuna from several countries. That decision was widely credited with saving the lives of dolphins, which often die after becoming entangled in tuna nets.

At a Glance …

Born on November 28, 1933, in Shreveport, LA; son of Eugene M. and Wanzie Roberts Henderson; divorced; children: Geoffrey A. Military service: U.S. Army, corporal, 1956-58. Education: University of California, Berkeley, BA, political science, 1956, Boalt Hall School of Law, JD, 1962.

Career: U.S. Department of Justice, attorney, 1962-63; FitzSimmons and Petris law firm, Oakland, CA, associate, 1964-66; East Bayshore Neighborhood Legal Center, directing attorney, 1966-69; Stanford Law School, assistant dean, 1968-77; Rosen, Remcho and Henderson law firm, founding partner, 1977-80; Golden Gate University School of Law, associate professor, 1978-80; U.S. District Court, 9th Circuit, Northern District, CA, judge, 1980-90, chief judge, 1990-97, chief judge emeritus, 1998—.

Memberships: National Bar Association; Charles Houston Law Association.

Awards: Bernard Witkin Medal, State Bar of California, 2004; Pearlstein Civil Rights Award, Anti-Defamation League; Lewis F. Powell Jr. Award for Professionalism and Ethics, American Inns of Court, 2005; Alumnus of the Year, California Alumni Association, 2008.

Addresses: Office—U.S. District Court, 450 Golden Gate Ave., San Francisco, CA, 94102.

It was Henderson's civil rights rulings, however, that were most controversial—and most responsible for giving him a national profile in legal circles. In his 1987 decision in the case of High Tech Gays v. Defense Industry Security Clearance Office, he held that the U.S. Department of Defense had violated the civil rights of gays and lesbians by applying stricter scrutiny to their applications for security clearances. But no decision of Henderson's was more thoroughly debated than his 1996 decision to strike down Proposition 209, a California ballot initiative, approved by voters, that banned affirmative action in the state's public institutions. Anti-affirmative action crusader Ward Connerly called Henderson's ruling "the most garbage decision I've ever seen," as quoted in Chiang's article, and it was itself later nullified by a three-judge appellate court panel. U.S. House Speaker Tom DeLay and the conservative National Review magazine called for Henderson's impeachment.

Henderson refused to back down from any of his rulings, pointing out to Kreisler that "the only thing that I, as a judge, make everyone happy on is when I do a wedding or when I do an immigration swearing-in…. Everything else I do, at least half of the people are unhappy because I'm ruling for someone and I'm therefore ruling against someone." In 2004 he attempted to enforce prison reforms by threatening to take control of the entire system. Henderson stirred controversy again in 2005 with a ruling that United Parcel Service could not require hearing tests of its truck drivers. Henderson's career was chronicled in the 2005 film Soul of Justice: Thelton Henderson's American Journey. By that time, Henderson could easily have retired and spent more time pursuing his favorite hobby of fishing. He had already accumulated the maximum possible pension, and he was suffering from a degenerative muscle disease. As of spring of 2008, however, he remained on the bench.

Selected writings

"Chapter 16: New Roles for the Legal Profession," Race, Change, and Urban Society, edited by Peter Orleans and William Russell Ellis Jr., Sage, 1971.

"Kennedy Justice: A Synthesis of Perspectives" (book review), Stanford Law Review, June 1972, p. 1147-54.

"The Civil Rights Lawyer in the 1980s," Cleveland State Law Review, Summer 1982, p. 385.

Sources

Periodicals

American Enterprise, June 2005, p. 9.

National Review, February 10, 1997, p. 16.

Recorder, August 9, 2005; October 4, 2005.

San Francisco Chronicle, October 7, 2005, p. F3.

San Jose Mercury News, July 20, 2004.

Online

Kreisler, Harry, "Thelton Henderson Interview," Globetrotter, University of California at Berkeley, April 28, 1998, http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/Henderson/henderson-con1.html (accessed March 12, 2008).

"Thelton E. Henderson: United States District Judge" (curriculum vitae), Globetrotter, University of California at Berkeley, http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/Henderson/henderson-bio.html (accessed March 12, 2008).