Christopher F. Droney

Early life and education Droney was born on June 22, 1954, in Hartford, Connecticut. He was raised in neighboring West Hartford. He was one of four children of John F. Droney and Christine Anne (née Fitzgerald) Droney, who had moved to West Hartford after World War II. His older brother John F. Droney Jr. later became a prominent Connecticut trial lawyer and served as the chairman of the Connecticut Democratic Party.

Droney graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, with a Bachelor of Arts in history, magna cum laude, in 1976. As an undergraduate at Holy Cross, he was elected to Alpha Sigma Nu, the Jesuit honor society, and Phi Alpha Theta. During the summer after his graduation, Droney worked as a laborer at a Heublein bottling plant in Hartford.

Federal judicial service On June 5, 1997, Droney was nominated by President Bill Clinton to a seat on the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut vacated by Alan Harris Nevas. Droney was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate on September 11, 1997, and received his commission on September 18, 1997. His service as a district judge was terminated on December 1, 2011 when he was elevated to the court of appeals. He received his commission on December 1, 2011. In August 2019, Droney announced that he would retire from the bench in January 2020 and resume private practice. He retired on January 2, 2020 and rejoined a law firm, Day Pitney. On March 13, 2023, he left Day Pitney to create his own law firm, Droney Law in West Hartford.

In 2021, Droney was appointed by the National Football League Management Council and the NFL Players Association as the system arbitrator for the league.

Notable cases As a United States District Judge, Droney presided over such matters as a multi-district class action involving RICO and fraud charges in the national food service industry, the first sex trafficking criminal jury trial under the then-new federal child sex trafficking statutes, and the return of the famous television puppet Howdy Doody from private parties to the museum at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

While on the Court of Appeals, Droney authored the Ragbir opinion, which held that immigrants could not be deported in retaliation for their protected First Amendment speech, Littlejohn v. City of New York, which eased the pleading standard for federal employment discrimination claims, and Force v. Facebook, 934 F. 3d 53 (2d Cir. 2019), which recognized immunity of internet computer service providers under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act for information posted by third parties. He also provided the deciding vote for the Second Circuit in Windsor v. United States, which held that the Equal Protection Clause guaranteed the right of same-sex couples to marry, which was affirmed by the United States Supreme Court. He also dissented from the denial of en banc in the Microsoft email case, arguing that federal prosecutors could obtain emails of Microsoft customers that were stored abroad. Droney also joined in the Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump opinion, which held that the President's Twitter account was a First Amendment-protected public forum and the President could not block unfavorable comments from that account, the panel opinion in CREW v. Trump, which held that the suit could proceed against President Trump for violation of the Constitution's emoluments clause for his profits from his hotels and restaurants, as well as the Vance v. Trump opinion, which held that the President's personal tax returns were not immune from production in response to a state grand jury subpoena. He also joined the opinion which required the disclosure of the Jeffrey Epstein court documents.