Allison D. Burroughs
Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts
Assumed office
December 19, 2014
Appointed byBarack Obama
Preceded byRya W. Zobel
Personal details
Born
Allison Dale Burroughs[1]

(1961-04-25) April 25, 1961
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
EducationMiddlebury College (BA)
University of Pennsylvania (JD)

Allison Dale Burroughs (born April 25, 1961) is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Biography

Burroughs was born in 1961 in Boston.[1] She received a Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude, from Middlebury College. She received a Juris Doctor, cum laude, in 1988 from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She began her legal career as a law clerk for Judge Norma Levy Shapiro of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1988 to 1989. She served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1989 to 1995 and in the District of Massachusetts from 1995 to 2005. From 2005 to 2014 she was a partner at Nutter McClennen & Fish where she represented individuals and corporations in criminal and civil proceedings primarily before Federal Courts.[2][3]

Federal judicial service

On July 31, 2014, President Barack Obama nominated Burroughs to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, to the seat vacated by Judge Rya W. Zobel, who assumed senior status on April 1, 2014.[4] She received a hearing before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary on September 17, 2014.[5] On November 20, 2014, her nomination was reported out of committee by voice vote.[6] On December 13, 2014, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed a motion to invoke cloture on the nomination. On December 16, 2014, Reid withdrew his cloture motion on Burroughs' nomination, and the Senate proceeded to confirm Burroughs by a voice vote. She received her federal judicial commission on December 19, 2014,[3] and was sworn in on January 7, 2015.[7]

Notable cases

Burroughs is most notable for her order putting a hold on President Donald Trump's travel ban in January 2017 (Executive Order 13769), and as the judge who presided over United States v. Salemme, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University, and United States v. Babich. Salemme was the last major trial of La Cosa Nostra mobsters. Francis Salemme (aka "Cadillac Frank") and co-defendant Paul Weadick were convicted of the murder of 43-year-old Steven A. DiSarro, who disappeared in May 1993. Salemme and Weadick were sentenced to life in prison in September 2018. In October 2018, Burroughs held a three-week bench trial in SFFA v. Harvard, a lawsuit challenging Harvard's admissions program as discriminatory against Asian Americans.[8] A decision in favor of the university was announced on October 1, 2019.[9] United States v. Babich is a criminal case brought against several former executives of the pharmaceutical company Insys Therapeutics. The government alleged that the executives violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), 18 U.S.C. 1692 et seq., by engaging in a scheme to sell the fentanyl-based pain medication Subsys by bribing physicians to prescribe the drug. The indictments led to guilty pleas, including by former Insys CEO Michael Babich. The remaining defendants were tried from January through April 2019.[10] All five remaining defendants, including former billionaire John Kapoor, were convicted of racketeering.

Burroughs also presided over a July 2020 lawsuit filed by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that sought to halt an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policy that required international students in the United States on F-1 visas to depart the country if they would not be attending in-person classes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Judge Burroughs announced that the Trump administration had agreed to reverse the policy during a July 14, 2020 hearing in her Boston courtroom.[11]

In December 2020, Burroughs presided over a lawsuit brought by five Republicans who lost state and federal legislative races in Massachusetts and sought to overturn the election results. Judge Burroughs stated during a December 2020 hearing that she viewed the lawsuit's requested relief of invalidating the votes of millions of Massachusetts resident as “too late,” “misplaced,” and “terribly unfair.” [12]

Burroughs has also presided over several class actions related to consumer products. In re Intuniv Antitrust Litigation concerned allegedly anticompetitive agreements between drug makers Shire and Actavis purportedly aimed at charging supracompetitive prices for an ADHD medication.[13] Judge Burroughs' class certification opinions in the matter (one opinion certifying a class of direct purchasers, and another declining to certify a class of indirect, consumer purchasers) are notable for their application of the predominance required for class certification where putative classes contain numerous uninjured members.[14]

In class actions against Nestlé, The Hershey Company, and Mars Inc., Burroughs considered allegations that the companies violated Massachusetts product labeling laws by failing to disclose the use of slave child labour in cocoa production. Judge Burroughs dismissed the complaints against the chocolate bar companies in January 2019,[15] a decision upheld by the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in June 2020.[16][17] In September 2019, Burroughs also dismissed a class action suit that claimed the packaging of Honey Bunches of Oats cereal was misleading given the cereal's limited honey content.[18]

In a February 2020 decision, Burroughs ordered the release of certain grand jury materials related to the Pentagon Papers.[19]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Senate Judiciary Committee Nomination Questionnaire" (PDF).
  2. ↑ "President Obama Nominates Two to Serve on the United States District Courts". whitehouse.gov. 31 July 2014 – via National Archives.
  3. 1 2 Allison D. Burroughs at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
  4. ↑ "THE WHITE HOUSE NOMINATIONS SENT TO THE SENATE: Allison Dale Burroughs, Amit Priyavadan Mehta, – Created by Don – In category: Human Interest – Tagged with: – Don411.com Media :: Performing Arts News Unabridged -". don411.com. August 2014.
  5. ↑ "Judicial Nominations" United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, September 17, 2014.
  6. ↑ "Results of Executive Business Meeting – November 20, 2014 United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary" (PDF).
  7. ↑ "Press Release" (PDF). United States District Court: District of Massachusetts. January 7, 2015. Retrieved January 22, 2019.
  8. ↑ Harris, Adam (November 2, 2018). "The Stakes for the Harvard Trial Are Higher Now That It's Over". The Atlantic. Retrieved January 22, 2019.
  9. ↑ Hartocollis, Anemona (2019-10-01). "Harvard Does Not Discriminate Against Asian-Americans in Admissions, Judge Rules". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-06-15.
  10. ↑ "Press Release". United States Department of Justice. January 17, 2019. Retrieved January 22, 2019.
  11. ↑ "Gov't Rescinds Rule Barring Foreign Students From U.S. While Colleges Hold Classes Remotely". United States Department of Justice. July 14, 2020. Archived from the original on August 19, 2013. Retrieved July 20, 2020.
  12. ↑ "Federal judge blasts Republican candidates' request to 'invalidate' Massachusetts election results". 8 December 2020.
  13. ↑ "Shire Must Cough Up Some Docs In Pay-For-Delay Suit". Law 360. December 10, 2018. Retrieved February 2, 2019.
  14. ↑ "The Dollars And Sense Of Antitrust Class Certification: Part 1". Law 360. February 5, 2020. Retrieved May 15, 2020.
  15. ↑ Tomasella v. Nestlé USA, Inc., 364 F. Supp. 3d 26 (D. Mass 2019).
  16. ↑ Note, Recent Case: First Circuit Holds that Product Packages Need Not Disclose Labor Abuses, 134 Harv. L. Rev. 2257 (2021)..
  17. ↑ "Nestle, Hershey, Mars Get Child Labor Labeling Suit Tossed". Law 360. January 30, 2019. Retrieved February 2, 2019.
  18. ↑ "Court Isn't Sweet on Honey False Ad Suit". 10 September 2019.
  19. ↑ "Judge OKs limited release of Pentagon Papers case records". Military Times. February 4, 2020. Retrieved May 15, 2020.
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