William J. Martínez, a judge on Colorado’s U.S. District Court, announced that he will step down as an active judge effective Feb. 10, 2023.

Martínez, who is 68 this year, was an appointee of President Barack Obama, and has served since December 2010. He has opted to take a form of retirement known as senior status, which will enable him to continue handling cases while allowing President Joe Biden to nominate a new member to the seven-judge trial court.

This will be the fifth opportunity for Biden to make a judicial appointment in Colorado. Two of his nominees, U.S. District Court Judge Regina M. Rodriguez and Judge Veronica Rossman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, received Senate confirmation in 2021. Another seat on the district court remains vacant, and a final seat will come open this year when Judge Christine M. Arguello takes senior status.

The White House has already nominated candidates for the latter two vacancies.

Martínez was born in Mexico City and graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1980. After law school, he was a legal aid attorney representing indigent and working-class clients in landlord-tenant disputes, domestic violence cases and employment discrimination matters. After moving to Colorado, he was an attorney with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and then became a partner in an employment law firm.

As a private practice attorney, he testified before Colorado’s General Assembly in favor of a workers’ rights bill and a proposal to enhance the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act. A Democrat, Martínez volunteered in 2008 for Obama’s presidential campaign and the Senate campaign of Mark Udall.

He was one of the attorneys involved in multiple employment discrimination lawsuits against grocery chain Albertsons. According to the allegations, employees of color were repeatedly subjected to racial epithets and severe discipline. The litigation resulted in an $8.9 million payment to approximately 168 current and former employees in 2009.

“Most recently,” Martínez wrote to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary in February 2010, “I provided 113 hours of free representation to Mexican immigrants who had been defrauded by a used car dealership.”

Jamie Hubbard, now a partner at Stimson Stancil LaBranche Hubbard, was one of Martínez’s first law clerks when he took the bench. 

“He was a trial lawyer, somebody who actually took cases to trial and thought about how to do that and what it means for your client, and how hard an endeavor that is. I think it affected how he treated lawyers in his courtroom and it affected the way he treated litigants,” she said. “When people appeared in front of him, he cared very much about them.”

The judge raised eyebrows early in his tenure for advertising a legal clerkship for no pay, but required applicants to “morally commit to the position.” In one of his higher profile trials, Martínez presided over a case in which singer Taylor Swift accused a radio DJ of sexually assaulting her at a 2013 meet-and-greet in Denver. The jury sided with Swift.

“I want to thank Judge William J. Martínez and the jury for their careful consideration,” Swift said afterward.

More recently, Martínez handled cases involving Colorado’s COVID-19 relief program for minority business owners, the notice requirements the city of Denver must provide when it elects to clear homeless encampments, and the criminal case of a man accused of murdering his wife abroad.

Hubbard recalled watching Martínez form his criminal justice philosophy on the bench following a career as a civil attorney. She said that early on, the judge disagreed with one sentencing guideline for immigration offenses and wrote a detailed opinion laying out his reasoning.

“It was nice to see a judge follow his own compass and take a position and stick with it,” she said.

In addition to the four seats on Colorado’s U.S. District Court that have been or will be filled by Biden nominees, there are two members who will be eligible for retirement within the next few years: Chief Judge Philip A. Brimmer, a George W. Bush appointee, and Judge Raymond P. Moore, an Obama appointee.