43 Facts About Loretta Preska

Loretta A Preska was born on January 7,1949 and is an American lawyer who serves as a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Loretta Preska served as chief judge of the court for a seven-year term from 2009 to 2016, and took senior status in 2017.

Loretta Preska was born in Albany, New York, on January 7,1949, to her father, Victor, an engineer at Benet Laboratories at Watervliet Arsenal, and her mother, Etta Mae, a registered nurse.

Loretta Preska grew up in the Albany suburb of Delmar, where she was active in the Girl Scouts and graduated from Bethlehem Central High School.

Loretta Preska was an attorney in private practice in New York City from 1973 until 1992.

Loretta Preska primarily practiced commercial civil litigation in the federal courts, but represented several officers of EF Hutton in grand jury proceedings in connection with a case in which the company entered criminal guilty pleas.

Loretta Preska cites Floyd Abrams as a friend and mentor.

Loretta Preska was confirmed by the United States Senate on August 11,1992, by unanimous consent.

In 2010, as chief judge, Loretta Preska issued an order permitting criminal defense attorneys to carry mobile phones into the courthouse; previously, only federal prosecutors were permitted to do so.

In 2007, it was reported that Preska was on President George W Bush's short list of potential Supreme Court nominees.

Loretta Preska is considered a conservative judge, and served on the advisory board of the Federalist Society.

Loretta Preska's ruling was upheld by the Second Circuit in 1998.

In National Basketball Association v Motorola, Inc, Preska ruled in favor of the NBA, granting a permanent injunction blocking Motorola Inc and a statistics company from transmitting real-time basketball scores and other statistics through its "SportsTrax" pager service.

Loretta Preska ruled that the service was a commercial misappropriation rather than mere media coverage, but dismissed the NBA's copyright and Lanham Act false-advertising claims.

Loretta Preska ruled in December 2006 that FIFA had violated its previous 16-year sponsorship contract with MasterCard, which included a clause granting MasterCard a right of first refusal.

In Zuckerman v Metropolitan Museum of Art, Preska ruled in favor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, dismissing a lawsuit seeking the return of Picasso's painting The Actor to the heir of its original owners, Paul and Alice Leffmann.

Loretta Preska ruled that the Leffmanns' heir could not show, under New York law, that the painting was sold under duress.

In 1998, Loretta Preska presided over a defamation suit brought by Richard Jewell against the New York Post.

Loretta Preska dismissed claims based on a photograph and an editorial cartoon, but allowed the remainder of the claims to proceed.

In 2020, Loretta Preska denied a motion by British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein associate charged with recruiting girls abused by Epstein, to block the public release of her 2016 deposition testimony in a civil case.

Loretta Preska stayed her ruling pending Maxwell's appeal to the Second Circuit.

Loretta Preska presided over long-running litigation between Local 100 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union and New York's Metropolitan Opera.

In June 2000, Loretta Preska found the union to be in contempt, determining that the union had defamed the Met and engaged in harassment of Met board members.

Loretta Preska enjoined the union from distributing leaflets at the opera, but at the 2000 season opening, the union held a demonstration.

Loretta Preska ordered the union to pay the Met's sizable legal fees.

In 2015, Loretta Preska approved a settlement agreement between the federal government and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, terminating the consent decree that had been in place for 25 years.

Loretta Preska sided with Bloomberg News reporters, concluding that the Fed's claims that disclosure would cause an "imminent competitive harm" to borrowers were merely conjecture.

In Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v RD Legal Funding, LLC, Preska overturned the entirety of Title X of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Loretta Preska ruled that the law establishing the CFPB's structure was unconstitutional because it established that the agency's single director could be removed by the president only for cause.

Loretta Preska disagreed with the en banc decision of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that upheld the constitutionality of the CFPB's structure, and sided with the dissenter in that case, then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who believed that the protections for the CFPB director violated the Constitution's Take Care Clause.

In 2011, Loretta Preska sentenced Somali pirate Abduwali Muse to 33 years in prison for his leadership of a group of pirates who seized the Maersk Alabama and held its crew hostage.

In pronouncing sentence, Loretta Preska cited the defendant's "depraved acts of physical and psychological violence" including forcing Captain Richard Phillips to undergo a mock execution.

Loretta Preska oversaw the criminal case against Hector Xavier Monsegur, a computer hacker who assisted Anonymous and others in cyberattacks targeting credit card companies, various governments, and media outlets.

In 2014, Loretta Preska sentenced Monsegur to time served and a $1,200 fine; federal prosecutors requested, and Loretta Preska granted, the lenient sentence due to Monsegur's "extraordinary" cooperation with the government.

Hammond pleaded guilty in 2013 to hacking the private intelligence firm Stratfor, and Loretta Preska sentenced him to the maximum 10 years.

In 2009, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first detainee brought from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to stand trial in a US civilian court, appeared before Loretta Preska to plead not guilty.

In 2014, Loretta Preska sentenced Eric Stevenson, a former New York state assemblyman from the Bronx, to three years in prison for bribery.

In 2019, Loretta Preska sentenced Patrick Ho, a former Hong Kong ophthalmologist and government official, to three years in prison for conspiring to bribe African government officials to secure oil rights for CEFC China, an energy company.

In 2017, Loretta Preska sentenced former Rikers Island guard Brian Coll to 30 years in prison for beating inmate Ronald Spear to death in 2012.

Loretta Preska oversaw the proceedings against Chuck Person, a former NBA player and assistant coach of the Auburn Tigers men's basketball team, who was implicated in a college basketball corruption scandal.

In 2019, after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery, Loretta Preska sentenced him to two years of probation and 200 hours of community service.

Loretta Preska found that "no purpose would be served" by sending the remorseful Person to prison; rejected prosecutors' argument that Person was motivated by "insatiable greed"; and cited Person's long record of charitable giving.

In 1983, Preska married Thomas J Kavaler, with whom she attended law school.