Luther B. Way

Luther Bynum Way (September 26, 1879 – October 23, 1943) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Early and family life

Born in Alamance County, North Carolina, Way graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1907. He married Ione Hornaday, and they had three sons: Franklin (b. 1911), Luther Jr. (b. 1913) and O. Newton (b. 1915).

Legal career Admitted to the Virginia bar, Way was in private practice in Norfolk from 1907 to 1922, and tried to revitalize the Republican party in the Tidewater region. As campaign manager for Menalcus Lankford, he did twice secure his friend's election to Congress. He was a special assistant to the United States Attorney in the United States Department of Justice in 1922. He was in private practice in Norfolk, Virginia from 1923 to 1931, and widely endorsed for the judicial post.

Federal judicial service

On February 21, 1931, President Herbert Hoover nominated Way to a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia when Judge Duncan Lawrence Groner was promoted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The United States Senate confirmed Way on March 2, 1931, and he received his commission on March 4, 1931. He served in that capacity until his death on October 23, 1943, in Norfolk.

Two of the more controversial cases Judge Way decided involved disparate pay for black schoolteachers and administrators. In the first case, involving Margaret Alston, Way had granted the school board's motion to dismiss, holding that Alston had accepted the lower pay in her annual contract. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed him, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied the school board's petition for review. Thus, when a similar matter involving schoolteacher Dorothy Roles reached Judge Way, in January 1943, he issued an injunction forbidding further pay discrimination.