Profile in Professionalism
Judge Richard W. Story
2024 Professionalism Award for the Eleventh Circuit
By Rebecca A. Clay
For Richard Story, growing up in a segregated small town in the South helped propel him into law. His high school’s desegregation was a real epiphany: “All of a sudden, I realized there were all these wonderful people living just a few miles away and I did not even know about them. It blew me away,” he says.
Story is now a senior district judge for the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Georgia. His father’s role as a county commissioner also helped spur Story’s interest in public service.
Along with his brother, Story became the first generation in his family to attend college. He earned an undergraduate degree in English from LaGrange College in 1975, then went on to earn a law degree from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1978. Story now helps others become first-generation college students. When his law school proposed to commission a portrait of him to hang on its campus, he asked that the funds be used to fund a scholarship instead. The Judge Richard W. (Rick) Story Scholarship Fund supports students who demonstrate civility, kindness, and other traits associated with Story, with special preference for first-generation students.
After law school, Story served as a partner in the Gainesville law firm Hulsey, Oliver & Mahar LLP and a special assistant attorney general representing the State of Georgia in child support and custody cases. From 1985 to 1986, Story was a juvenile court judge for Hall County, then became a judge of the Superior Courts for the Northeastern Judicial Circuit of Georgia. He became a U.S. district judge for the Northern District of Georgia in 1998.
One of the cases he is proudest of is one that ensured deaf children in Georgia would have equal access to mental health services. “When I explained that I had ordered the State of Georgia to treat their children like every other child in Georgia, everyone in the courtroom raised both hands in the air and shook them vigorously—their way to cheer,” Story says. “The fact that I had a small part of that will take me to the end, when I hang up the robe.”
Story is also proud of the international and domestic human trafficking cases he has handled. As a result of those experiences, he became one of five federal judges from the United States to attend the Judges’ Summit Against Human Trafficking and Organized Crime at the Vatican in 2016. He also taught a workshop on investigating and prosecuting human trafficking in Guatemala.
Story took senior status in 2018 but still handles what would be considered a full case load in less busy court systems—almost 200 active cases. “We are a very busy court,” he says. “We are being fed cases through a fire hose.”
As a result of a recent class action settlement, Story has something else to keep him busy: a civics education program he launched. The settlement, Story explains, included a provision that any funds not distributed to the class would go to the judge to do with as he pleased. “It was really cool,” says Story, explaining that the two sides fought so much they would never have agreed how to use the leftover funds. “I had never had $365,000 to do with as I wished.”
The result was a program that gives grants to three law schools to use to send law students into local high schools to teach civics and bring high school students to law schools to encourage them to pursue legal careers. Story hopes the participating law schools will create templates so the program can spread to other locales.
Despite his busy schedule, Story’s senior status has allowed him to cross a few items off his bucket list. He and his wife recently visited Australia and New Zealand, for instance. “I had never been able to take three weeks off before,” he says.
Story knocked off one of his major life dreams years ago when he played Atticus Finch in an amateur theater production of To Kill a Mockingbird. He and his wife were attending another production when the director announced try-outs for the next play. Despite having no acting experience, Story took a shot. “When I filled out the application for it, I turned to the back side where it said credits and had to leave it a blank sheet,” he says. “The fact that they gave me that role was one of the highlights of my life.”