John H. Pratt

John Helm Pratt (November 17, 1910 – August 11, 1995) was an American lawyer and judge. Born in New Hampshire, Pratt spent most of his life in the Washington, D.C. area, where he practiced law for 34 years before being appointed as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. As a federal judge, Pratt presided over a number of significant cases, including the Watergate trial of G. Gordon Liddy and civil rights cases involving school desegregation and discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Early life and education

Pratt was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on November 17, 1910, to Harold B. and Marguerite R. Pratt. At age nine, he and his family moved to the Washington, D.C. area, after his father, a United States Marine Corps officer, was stationed in the area.

Military service and legal career

Pratt served in the United States Marine Corps from 1942 and was discharged with the rank of captain in 1946. He lost a left arm, in December 1944, in Tacloban, Leyte, the Philippines.

Pratt also presided over Hoffa v. Saxbe, a case in which former Teamsters leader James R. Hoffa unsuccessfully made a constitutional challenge to the condition of his 1971 presidential pardon barring him from engaging in "direct or indirect management of any labor union" until March 1980. Pratt ruled in 1974 that the condition of the pardon was valid because (1) it had a direct relationship to the public interest and (2) it did not "unreasonably infringe" on Hoffa's constitutional freedoms.

Pratt also issued rulings on important civil rights issues.

Pratt also presided over another case, Adams v. Richardson (1973), brought by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which sought to compel the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) to enforcedesegregation in schools. Pratt rejected the HEW's argument that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the department the discretion to wait for "voluntary compliance" from the states. Pratt also ordered the withholding of federal funding from school districts that failed to comply. Pratt determined that "patients' constitutional rights to adequate care and treatment had been violated" and issued an order setting forth sweeping changes to be made at the facility, including the movement of 20% of patients to community treatment facilities and limits on the use of physical restraints. In 1990, Pratt held the district in civil contempt of court after learning that just two physicians were caring for 232 residents at Forest Haven, including one who had been determined to be "professionally incompetent" by the Maryland Commission on Medical Discipline two years earlier. Pratt ruled that the district was "continuing obdurate resistance" to providing adequate services to the patients. After repeatedly missing court-imposed deadlines to close Forest Haven, the district finally closed the facility in 1991. he appointed Margaret G. Farrell as special master the following year. Pratt ruled in favor of complainant Catherine A. Broderick, a Securities and Exchange Commission attorney, finding that Broderick had suffered from pervasive sexual harassment at the SEC's regional office in Washington.

Senior status and death

Pratt assumed senior status on December 1, 1989, and from then on chose to hear only civil cases. He called the Federal Sentencing Guidelines "atrocious" and believed they set forth excessively harsh penalties for first-time offenders. Pratt was also a critic of mandatory minimum sentences and in the sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. Pratt served as chairman of the Committee on Judicial Ethics of the Judicial Conference of the United States from 1984 to 1990. He remained on the court until he died on August 11, 1995, at his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, of lung cancer.

Personal life

Pratt married Bernice Safford Pratt, known as Sissy, on October 25, 1938. They had five children, four daughters and one son.