Vassar Quarterly - Fall 2017 - 42

Beyond Vassar

Judge Diana Gribbon Motz '65
was asked to rule on the president's
proposed travel ban this spring.
For her, it was just one decision
in a career of

Tough
Cases

ll eyes were on a courtroom in Richmond, VA, this past
May. There, a White House lawyer was arguing for the
reinstatement of President Trump's travel ban on six
majority Muslim countries, saying the president had
the right to decide immigration policy, despite his comments about
Muslims on the campaign trail. "So it doesn't matter what a president
says? It only matters what the president does?" asked Diana Gribbon
Motz '65, one of the 15 lawyers on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals
hearing the case.
During an almost two-decade career on the court, Motz has
become known for her sharp intellect and discerning judgment. Two
weeks later, she sided with the majority opinion in denouncing the
administration's ban, which the court said "speaks with vague words
of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance,
animus, and discrimination." [The controversial case went all the
way to the Supreme Court, which brokered a compromise that would
allow those with "close family ties" to enter. Months later, the number
of affected countries were expanded.]
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Motz is used to weighing in on high-profile cases. Almost exactly
a year earlier, she was one of three judges who unanimously ruled
that the North Carolina legislature actively discriminated against
African Americans with prejudicial voter ID laws. In a scathing
opinion, Motz wrote that the laws enacted by the legislature "target
African Americans with almost surgical precision" and that its
"justifications cannot and do not conceal the State's true motivation"
of discrimination.
Although she won't speak about the content of her decisions,
Motz clearly relishes the ability to rule on some of the most important
constitutional issues of our time. "If you are not interested in constitutional questions as a judge, then you are not interested in breathing,"
she says.
Motz grew up in DC, where her father was a lawyer, but she had
never thought about becoming a lawyer herself. After attending an
all-girls Catholic school, she studied history at Vassar and considered
teaching, but the life of an academic wasn't for her-too many solitary
hours in the library. Upon graduation she applied for a job at an

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Vassar Quarterly - Fall 2017