D.C. Circuit’s David Tatel Pairs Judging, Blindness in Memoir

Retired D.C. Circuit Judge David Tatel’s guide dog Vixen spends an hour-long interview sitting quietly under the table at a coffee shop in Washington’s NoMa neighborhood as cars blasting music and tourists rolling suitcases pass by her—aside from one brief outburst over a Shih Tzu on a walk.

The German Shepherd with a pink collar has spent five years with Tatel. He credits her with changing his life, from his views on the bond a human can share with an animal to his ability to take walks without another person present. She aptly graces the cover of Tatel’s book, “Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice,” due out Tuesday, posed upright and staring directly at the camera like, a very good dog.

Tatel, once floated as a possible contender for the Supreme Court, reflects in his memoir on his long career in civil rights law and on the bench for the appeals court often referenced as the second-highest court in the land.

Tatel, 82, also sharply criticizes the current Supreme Court, taking aim at recent decisions that undermine voting rights, and raising concern about the erosion of public trust in the institution.

Intertwined into those themes—or “braided,” as he calls it in his book—is his own personal journey of losing his vision. Tatel, who was raised in a Maryland suburb of Washington, was diagnosed as a child with a rare genetic disorder known as Retinitis pigmentosa, and lost his vision over time.

When he was appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by President Bill Clinton, he became the first blind federal appeals court judge.

At the beginning of his nearly three-decade tenure, Tatel said in an interview there was “no question” he was “viewed as the blind judge in the D.C. Circuit.”

“After 30 years, people, I hope, viewed me as a really good judge on the D.C. Circuit who happened to be blind,” he said.

In his memoir, Tatel said he recused himself from a case just once because of his blindness. It was against the Treasury Department and was related to the inaccessibility of US currency for visually impaired people.

In two other cases involving how much one design resembled another, he writes that he didn’t recuse, but “in retrospect” he “should have.”

The standard for recusal isn’t if a judge could decide a case impartially, but whether a judge’s impartiality could “reasonably be questioned,” Tatel said.

“Even if I thought the public is wrong to think that a blind judge couldn’t sit on a currency case, if in their mind it would lead them to question the legitimacy of decisions, then I should recuse myself,” he said.

He also describes, in his memoir, the lengths he took earlier in his career to conceal his blindness.

Tatel wrote that his effort to hide his disability is one he’s come to regret, describing a missed opportunity to “help dispel stereotypes about the capabilities of people with disabilities” and inspire others.

Still, his blindness wasn’t a topic he expected to write so publicly about until recently.

“Five years ago, if you had told me I was going to write a book about blindness, I would have said, ‘no way, I’m not going to do that.’ I spent all these years successfully avoiding it. Why would I start talking about it?” Tatel said.

He credits his wife, Edie, a retired teacher coach who Tatel said was integral to the writing and editing of his memoir, and his dog Vixen for changing his perspective.

“Everybody wants to talk about the dog, and I love to talk about the dog. And therefore it suddenly becomes comfortable to talk about blindness,” he said.

Criticism ‘Guideposts’

Tatel, who served on the D.C. Circuit from 1994 until his retirement in January, issued major rulings backing environmental regulations and voting rights.

He authored the majority decision in Shelby County v. Holder upholding part of the Voting Rights Act that notably was overturned in 2013 by a 5-4 conservative Supreme Court majority.

Before joining the D.C. Circuit, Tatel was founding director of the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under Law; led the Office for Civil Rights in what was then the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare during the Carter administration, and founded the education practice at Hogan Lovells. He has now returned to the Big Law firm as senior counsel.

In his memoir, Tatel reflects on recent high-profile rulings by the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts and wrote that the court has “veered off course.” He and Roberts served on the D.C. Circuit together for about two years before Roberts was elevated by George W. Bush.

In rulings against affirmative action and abortion rights, Tatel wrote that the Roberts Court has “kicked precedent to the curb.” He also wrote that he was “tired” of having his decisions reviewed by a Supreme Court “that seemed to hold in such low regard the principles to which I’ve dedicated my life.”

In the interview, Tatel cited three “guideposts” that he’s kept in mind in his criticism.

He wanted to focus his commentary on two areas he handled often as a judge and where he said he has more “credibility.” Those are voting rights and the environment.

Tatel also referred to decisions he discusses as coming from the court, and not from individual justices.

“There’s nothing in this book that’s personal. I don’t talk about the individual justices. I don’t talk about their motives. I didn’t want to get there. That’s not me,” Tatel said.

And finally, he wanted to focus less on the outcome the Supreme Court reached in a particular case, and more on the process behind it, or “how it got there and was it a legitimate act of judging.”

“What I care about is the judicial process. That’s what my whole book’s about: judicial process, the legitimacy of the process. Because if the court loses that legitimacy, it’s a real threat to the separation of powers, individual liberty. It’s very dangerous if that happens,” he said.

By sticking to those three boundaries, Tatel said he hopes readers will understand his memoir as “a sincere, non personal, non political assessment of where I think things are.”