Steve C. Jones

Steve CarMichael Jones (born January 26, 1957) is a senior United States district judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia and a former judge of the Georgia Superior Court.

Early life and education Jones was born and raised in Athens, Georgia and graduated from Cedar Shoals High School. He received a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from University of Georgia in 1978. He then ran the Child Support Recovery Office for the local district attorney for six years. Jones is a graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law, receiving his Juris Doctor in 1987.

Judicial career Georgia state judicial service

Jones served as a municipal court judge in Athens-Clarke County from 1993 to 1995. Jones did not receive the nomination, which went to Macon attorney Marc T. Treadwell in February 2010. On July 14, 2010, President Barack Obama nominated Jones to replace Orinda D. Evans on the Northern District of Georgia. His nomination was confirmed by the Senate on February 28, 2011 by a 90–0 vote. He received his commission March 3, 2011. He assumed senior status on January 1, 2025. in October 2019, Jones issued a temporary injunction against enforcement of a new Georgia law regulating abortions that was to go into effect January 1, 2020. The law is one of the nation’s strictest as it outlaws abortion in most cases once fetal cardiac activity can be detected. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruling struck down the Louisiana abortion law on July 13, 2020, Jones issued his final order striking down the Georgia law, finding the statute violated a woman’s constitutional right to access to abortion as established by the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade. Jones wrote, “It is in the public interest, and is this court’s duty, to ensure constitutional rights are protected.” The ruling reinstated Georgia's previous statute passed in 2012 allowing abortions through 20 weeks of gestation, or approximately 22 weeks of pregnancy. A spokesman for the Georgia Attorney General’s Office said the state would appeal the ruling. Jones later found that plaintiff Fair Fight Action and other plaintiffs had not shown that they were likely to prevail on the question of constitutionality, but wrote that the State of Georgia was required to conduct “additional diligent and reasonable efforts” to make people aware of the need of canceled voters to re-register, and that the plaintiffs could seek “emergency relief” utilizing a state court that was better suited to deal with the matter. Georgia is one of nine states with a law allowing voters to be removed from the list of registered voters for inactivity, which could have prevented voters from voting previously and resulted in their placement on the inactive voters list. The list of past voters that Jones did not enjoin from being purged does not have any included data regarding racial disparities among the affected voters.

Personal life Jones is married to Lillian Kincey, a teacher.