The African-American federal judge that President Barack Obama has nominated to join the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is a force to be reckoned with.
By all accounts U.S. District Judge Robert Wilkins is determined to uphold justice, not just in his professional career as an attorney, but in his personal life as well.
Indeed, a defining moment was when the young budding lawyer made the decision to sue the Maryland State Police for racial profiling.
The case came about in 1992 when Wilkins was in a rented car with three family members and they were pulled over by Maryland State Police for violating the speed limit.
His cousin Scott El-Amin was driving in their rented Cadillac and he was cited for speeding. They declined the trooper’s request to search their vehicle and were told as a result they would have to wait for a canine search.
Wilkins has said his family’s roadside detention in the rain for an eventual search by a drug-sniffing dog was a “humiliating and degrading experience” and he’s been determined to use the courts to prevent it from happening to others.
Wilkins, who at the time was a public defender in Washington, filed suit in the case of Wilkins v. Maryland State Police and eventually won a “landmark” settlement against the state of Maryland.
As part of the groundbreaking settlement, Maryland officers were required to note the race and gender of drivers who were pulled over and searched.
Other states followed suit, and an executive order on racial profiling was also issued.
Still, Wilkins has said his family began to monitor Maryland State Police data and saw a disturbing trend — 70-75 percent of those searched on Interstate 95 were African-American, even though only blacks made up only 17 percent of drivers traveling there.
They filed another suit on behalf of the NAACP and after several years of negotiation, a second settlement was reached in 2003 requiring improved trooper training, a brand new process to handle racial profiling complaints and more overseeing of the agency’s handling of it.
The case helped bring national attention to the practice of racial profiling and helped popularize the term “driving while black.”
From early on, Wilkins was a high achiever. A native of Muncie Indiana, he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering in 1986 and earned his Juris Doctor from the prestigious Harvard Law School in 1989.
After completing law school, he served as a law clerk. Later he worked as a public defender in Washington. Starting in 2002, he was a partner at the leading law firm Venable LLP, specializing in white collar defense, intellectual property and complex civil litigation.
In 2010, Wilkins was successfully confirmed to the U.S. District Court by unanimous consent.
This latest accolade is the icing on the cake for the man behind the “driving while black” litigation.
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