Myron H. Thompson

For the Canadian politician, see Myron Thompson.

Myron H. Thompson
Thompson in 2017
Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama
Incumbent
Assumed office August 22, 2013
Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama
In office 1991–1998
Preceded by	Truman McGill Hobbs
Succeeded by	Harold Albritton
Judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama
In office September 29, 1980 – August 22, 2013
Appointed by	Jimmy Carter
Preceded by	Frank Minis Johnson
Succeeded by	Emily C. Marks
Personal details
Born	Myron Herbert Thompson (1947-01-07) January 7, 1947 Tuskegee, Alabama
Education	Yale University (BA, JD)

Myron Herbert Thompson (born January 7, 1947) is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.

Education and career

Born in Tuskegee, Alabama, Thompson received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University in 1969 and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1972. He was an Assistant Attorney General of Alabama from 1972 to 1974, and then in private practice in Dothan, Alabama until 1980.

Federal judicial service

Judge Thompson's portrait.

On September 17, 1980, Thompson was nominated by President Jimmy Carter to a seat on the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama vacated by Judge Frank Minis Johnson. Thompson was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 26, 1980, and received his commission on September 29, 1980. He served as Chief Judge from 1991 to 1998. He took senior status on August 22, 2013. As of 2020, he is the last Democratic appointee to serve on the District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, and also the last judge appointed by a Democratic president to that court.

Notable cases

In 2013, in a redistricting case heard by a three-judge panel, Thompson disagreed with its decision contending it was an illegal use of racial quotas. He wrote that Alabama's use of the Voting Rights Act was a "cruel irony," that as the state was simultaneously arguing before the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder, that Section 5 should be found unconstitutional, it was "relying on racial quotas…and seeking to justify those quotas with the very provision it was helping to render inert." On October 29, 2019, Judge Thompson issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Human Life Protection Act from taking effect in Alabama as prescribed on November 15, 2019. The Alabama law "imposes criminal liability on abortion providers for nearly all abortions, completed or attempted, regardless of fetal viability." In essence," the Court said, "the Act imposes a near-total ban on abortion." Judge Thompson concluded, "The court is persuaded that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in showing that the Act violates an individual’s constitutional right to obtain a pre-viability abortion, and thus that it violates her constitutional rights." In 2014, in Planned Parenthood Southeast, Inc., v. Strange, (also known as Planned Parenthood Southeast, Inc., v. Bentley), Thompson ruled an Alabama law regulating abortion unconstitutional, citing the undue burden standard.

See also

• List of African-American federal judges
• List of African-American jurists
• List of United States federal judges by longevity of service

Sources

• Myron Herbert Thompson at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center.