All eyes are on Judge Dolly Maizie Gee, the Los Angeles-based federal judge who will consider the Justice Department’s soon-to-be-filed request to…

By Ellis Kim | June 20, 2018

Judge Dolly Gee (Photo: Jacqueline Carey-Wilson)

All eyes are on Judge Dolly Maizie Gee, the Los Angeles-based federal judge who will consider the Justice Department’s soon-to-be-filed request to modify the Flores consent decree.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order Wednesday in an effort to stem the continued public outcry over the separation of families at the United States’ southwest border. The order directs Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “promptly” ask the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California to modify the 1997 settlement agreement.

Under that consent decree, the government can only keep children, unaccompanied or accompanied, in its custody for 20 days. Gene Hamilton, a counselor to Sessions, said in a press call that the time frame put the government in an “untenable position.”

Now, the focus shifts to Gee, who will consider that request once it’s filed. Gee has served on the federal bench since 2010. She was first nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1999, but senators did not take up her nomination. President Barack Obama nominated her to the same court a decade later.

Here are some other things to know about Gee:

She’s the first Chinese-American woman to serve as a district judge. Her grandfather came to the U.S. from China during the 1930s, according to the Los Angeles Times. He owned a Brooklyn factory, her father served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and her mother was a garment worker.

She had stern words for the Obama administration in 2015. She found the administration’s use of Texas detention centers during the Central American migrant crisis violated Flores. In that order, she called the conditions of the centers “deplorable” and said the government “wholly failed” to even meet a minimal standard of “safe and sanitary” holding cells.

She’s overseen big immigration-related cases before. One was a class action lawsuit involving mentally incompetent immigrant detainees. In 2013, she ruled those detainees should be afforded a lawyer. Los Angeles-based Sullivan & Cromwell partner Michael Steinberg, who was involved in that case, said Gee proved to be a smart and thoughtful judge on a complicated issue. In her opinions, Gee “wouldn’t restrain herself to what the parties had cited. They were thoughtful,” Steinberg said.

That wasn’t her only big immigration-related case. Judge Gee issued a big ruling against the Trump administration after the first travel ban last year. She ordered the government to return an Iranian man to the U.S. after he had been turned away and diverted to the United Arab Emirates. She said the plaintiff in the case showed a strong likelihood of success in establishing that his removal violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the establishment and equal protection clauses of the Constitution.

Her speciality as a lawyer was labor and employment law. According to her Senate questionnaire, she graduated from UCLA in 1981 and then UCLA School of Law in 1984. From there, she clerked for Judge Milton Schwartz on the District Court for the Eastern District of California. She then worked at Los Angeles firm Schwartz, Steinsapir, Dohrmann & Sommers and rose through the ranks to become a managing partner. Gee said in her Senate questionnaire that she “frequently provide(d) employees with training on sexual harassment and other employment laws.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4007083&forum_id=2#36283205)