A lawyer in Atlanta recently got first-hand experience with a pretty intense double standard. Stacy Ehrisman-Mickle, an immigration attorney in Atlanta, was publicly humiliated by a judge for having to bring her child to court.
Ehrisman-Mickle recently gave birth to an infant. She was entitled to six weeks of maternity leave, despite the fact that she did have a busy schedule of hearings and court proceedings. After her child was born, she tried to move some of the hearings scheduled during her maternity leave, using a doctor’s note to show why. All the judges and opposing attorneys complied with her motions to continue, with the exception of one — Judge J. Dan Pelletier Sr. He denied her request to move the hearing, saying she had no good cause.
So, Ehrisman-Mickle was put in an incredibly tough situation. She had a one-month-old baby, her husband was out of town for work, she had no family in the area, the child was too young for daycare, and she had just moved to town so she hadn’t found a babysitter yet. Essentially, she was left with a horrible choice — do her job or take care of her kid.
Luckily Ehrisman-Mickle was able to talk to her pediatrician who said that as long as she took appropriate precautions, she could show up that day with her baby strapped to her chest. All went relatively well, until the child started to cry, and Ehrisman-Mickle had to calm her down. At this point, Pelletier started scolding her for bringing her child to court. According to Ehrisman-Mickle,
When the [immigration judge] saw me with my daughter, he was outraged. He then questioned my mothering skills, as he commented how my pediatrician must be appalled that I am exposing my daughter to so many germs in court.
Ehrisman-Mickle was humiliated, and understandably so. There are a lot of serious problems with what happened to her — let’s start at the beginning.
The fact that she was not allowed the motion to continue. Motions to continue are very routine, as long as you can show that you have a good reason to file it. Most judges view having a child as a good reason, along with family emergencies and the like. Another requirement is that it’s rescheduled so that only a reasonable amount of time passes. Given that Ehrisman-Mickle only had six weeks of maternity leave to begin with, it’s clear that she could probably could have easily rescheduled the hearing to a different date that fell within the reasonable amount of time requirement.
Pelletier was unreasonable to deny the request, to be sure. But his public shaming of Ehrisman-Mickle is even worse — it’s ridiculous and unprofessional. There were other lawyers in the room with her when she was embarrassed who backed up her story. One of them talked to the Guardian confirming her story, but asked to not be named in hopes that Pelletier wouldn’t find out that it was him.
What happened to Ehrisman-Mickle was disgusting, but it shouldn’t be considered particularly surprising or even unusual. Maternity leave polices in the United States are pretty much accepted as being awful and outdated. We’re one of only a few countries that don’t have paid maternity leave, and the amount of time we give is almost laughably unproductive. That means that women are often put in situations like Ehrisman-Mickle’s, and sometimes they don’t even have the ability to consider taking their child to their job, or the access to a pediatrician to make sure that it would be ok to do so.
Ehrisman-Mickle has filed a complaint against Pelletier, and as of the time this story broke onto the national news scene, had not heard anything further.