Judge Linda Reade reflects on nearly 50 years in the courtroom

The law was not on Linda Reade’s radar when considering a career. When she graduated from a South Dakota high school, she set off for Drake University in Des Moines with much different aspirations.

“I wanted to be a marine biologist,” she laughed, “so obviously I went to Drake University in Iowa, which is landlocked.”

She graduated with a biology degree in 1970, but it would take her another 10 years — and a winding, curvy road — to get her law degree and open her private practice in law in Des Moines at the age of 32.

“Some people have a straight line drawn: they go to undergraduate school, and they’ve known they wanted to be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a writer, or whatever, almost from the minute they were born,” she said, “and they just take that straight path. That wasn’t me.”

Now 78 and senior judge of the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Iowa, Reade has spent the last 46 years in pursuit of the law, from her beginnings as a private attorney to her current post as the first woman presidentially appointed as a federal judge in the Northern District of Iowa. Posts between the two include assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Iowa, district court judge for Polk County and chief U.S. judge in the northern district from 2007 to 2017, when she was named senior judge.

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Having spent nearly 50 years in courtrooms in some aspect, Reade has been privy to decades of evolution in state and federal law. While still actively serving on the bench, she offers a rare perspective on both the history of our legal system and the issues it will face in the future.

Laws surrounding the LGBTQIA community have certainly evolved since Reade first stepped foot in a courtroom. As these laws and our social landscape continue to change, Reade evolves with them.

With change usually comes progress — and challenges, too.

“As a judge, the first concern is how to address [transgender individuals] in court,” she said. “Most times a judge will address the defendant as Mr. or Mrs. or Miss, but you have to know first how they’d prefer to be addressed, and second, how they’re going to be charged. They may go by a different name, but the charges will be in their legal name.”

In those cases, she said, she defers to respect.

“I explain to them that I mean no disrespect, but I am going to call them by their legal name if that is how they are charged,” she said.

That’s the least challenging part of the issue, she explains; if a transgender defendant must be detained, questions arise as to where they are housed and how to best keep them safe.

“It’s concerning to everyone that they are safe and that we work to the best of our ability to keep them safe while their cases are being processed,” she said.

Some changes are expected; others, not so much. However, both require the ability to adapt.

Reade recalled a trial she oversaw shortly after the 2008 flood, when a vacant warehouse was turned into a makeshift federal building.

“It was filthy dirty, the security was an old bicycle chain on the front door, no locks,” she remembered.

The building housed courtrooms and offices for both federal district and bankruptcy courts, as well as the U.S. Marshal and U.S. Attorney’s offices.

“We were all in there together without much security, and it wasn’t fancy at all,” she said. “The first winter we were there, I tried criminal cases in a conference room; I had a table and chairs, and we got old risers like you see in high school choir concerts, and we put chairs up on them and placed it against the window. That’s where the jury sat.”

She said she sat at a little table, and the defendant and defense attorney were at another little table, and a third table was for the prosecutor.

“Behind me was a little partition, and behind that was a Coke machine, and it was just humming away all day,” she said. “It was something.

She recalled one particularly cold winter spent in the makeshift courthouse.

“I remember one jury trial the jurors came in, and it was bloody cold in that room,” she said. “They had on their coats and hats and their mittens, their scarves, and they did their duty, serving on the jury as only Iowans would do. Faithfully doing their duty and not complaining.”

Reade and other dignitaries at a groundbreaking for a new court facility. Submitted photo.

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Reade and other dignitaries at a groundbreaking for a new court facility. Submitted photo.

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She said that’s one thing that has remained a constant in all her years in law: Iowans coming in and proudly doing their duty.

“We can be very proud of our citizens,” she said.

“I think as Midwesterners our value system is a little different than it might be in other parts of the country,” she said. “Obviously there are exceptions. But I have tried a lot of cases and met with a lot of jurors after they delivered their verdict in the courtroom and their service was over. I would go back and talk to them. They were smart, they were engaged. They had a lot of questions about the process. And they were very appreciative of the opportunity to serve and most of them said they would do it again.”

Reade thinks it’s important that people don’t put judges on pedestals, that they remember “we are all just people, too.”

“You don’t have to come from a professional family to be a good lawyer or to get a judicial position,” she said. “I don’t think Gov. (Terry) Branstad asked me about my background when he appointed me to the district court in Polk County. The President (George W. Bush) sure wasn’t interested when he appointed me to the Northern District of Iowa. So, people need to understand the judges they’re appearing before are not born with a silver spoon in their mouth.”

Reade’s parents divorced before she entered high school, at a time when divorce wasn’t something that happened very often. And there was no silver spoon: her father had an eighth-grade education, and her mother had a high school diploma.

“I think that’s important, because people tend to put us on pedestals,” she said. “My parents couldn’t get along with each other, but they did for me, and that is something I appreciate most. But for that, who knows what would have happened? People need to know, I’m just a person.”