Timothy Seymour Black (born August 30, 1953) is a senior

United States district judge The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district, which each cover one U.S. state or, in some cases, a portion of a state. Each district cou ...

of the

United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio The United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio (in case citations, S.D. Ohio) is one of two United States district courts in Ohio and includes forty-eight of the state's eighty-eight counties–everything from the Columbus are ...

Education

Black earned an Artium Baccalaureus from

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...

in 1975 and then earned a Juris Doctor in 1983 from the

Salmon P. Chase College of Law The NKU Chase College of Law (formerly Salmon P. Chase College of Law, also known as Chase College of Law) is the law school of Northern Kentucky University, a public university in Highland Heights, Kentucky. It provides both part-time (day and ...

Northern Kentucky University Northern Kentucky University is a public university in Highland Heights, Kentucky. It is primarily an undergraduate institution with over 14,000 students; over 12,000 are undergraduate students and nearly 2,000 are graduate students. Northern ...

."Obama nominates local lawyer for judgeship"
''

The Cincinnati Enquirer ''The Cincinnati Enquirer'' is a morning daily newspaper published by Gannett in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. First published in 1841, the ''Enquirer'' is the last remaining daily newspaper in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, al ...

'', December 24, 2009.

Career

Black practiced law as a civil litigator for the

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

law firm of Graydon Head & Ritchey from 1983 until 1993. In 1991, Black unsuccessfully ran in a judicial election for the Hamilton County

Municipal Court City court or municipal court is a court of law with jurisdiction limited to a city or other municipality. It typically addresses "violations of city ordinances and may also have jurisdiction over minor criminal cases...and over certain civil cases ...

as a Republican.Emily Foster and Linda Vaccariello, "Rating the Judges: Municipal Court", '' Cincinnati Magazine'', September 1997. In 1993, he ran as a Democrat and defeated sitting judge David Albanese. He served as a Hamilton County Municipal Court judge from 1994–2004. He ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Ohio Supreme Court in 2000 and 2002.

Federal judicial service

In 2004, the judges of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio selected Black as a

United States magistrate judge In United States federal courts, magistrate judges are judges appointed to assist U.S. district court judges in the performance of their duties. Magistrate judges generally oversee first appearances of criminal defendants, set bail, and conduc ...

.Dan Horn
Obama taps local lawyer for fed judge
''

'', December 24, 2009. In July 2009, a bipartisan commission in Ohio selected Black from a list of three finalists and recommended him to President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...

to fill a vacancy on the

. On December 24, 2009, Obama formally nominated Black to fill the district court vacancy, which was created by Judge Sandra Beckwith taking

senior status Senior status is a form of semi- retirement for United States federal judges. To qualify, a judge in the federal court system must be at least 65 years old, and the sum of the judge's age and years of service as a federal judge must be at leas ...

on January 1, 2009. On May 11, 2010, the United States Senate confirmed Black in a unanimous voice vote. He received his commission on May 13, 2010. He assumed

on May 18, 2022.

Recognition of same-sex married couple

On July 22, 2013, Black ruled that Ohio must recognize the same sex marriage of John Arthur and James Obergefell. Arthur, who died on October 22, 2013 of

Lou Gehrig's disease Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease (MND) or Lou Gehrig's disease, is a neurodegenerative disease that results in the progressive loss of motor neurons that control voluntary muscles. ALS is the most com ...

, and Obergefell were married in Maryland, where same-sex marriage is recognized, in a ceremony on an airplane on the airport tarmac. The ruling meant the pair can be buried next to each other in Arthur's family plot, located at a cemetery that only allows descendants and spouses. Black reasoned that because Ohio recognizes out-of-state heterosexual marriages that would be prohibited in Ohio, such as marriages between first cousins or minors – including those who married outside Ohio for the sole purpose of evading its marriage laws – the state cannot single out homosexual marriages as the sole category of out-of-state marriages to which it will not grant recognition. In September 2013, Ohio State Representative John Becker sent a letter to a member of the Ohio Congressional delegation asking him to initiate impeachment proceedings against Black. On December 23, 2013, Black ordered Ohio to recognize same-sex marriages from other states on death certificates, deeming Ohio's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional.

References

Sources

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Black, Timothy Seymour 1953 births Living people Harvard College alumni Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio Ohio Democrats Ohio Republicans Ohio state court judges People from Brookline, Massachusetts People from Hamilton County, Ohio Salmon P. Chase College of Law alumni United States district court judges appointed by Barack Obama 21st-century American judges United States magistrate judges