HOF 6.8.25 - Flipbook - Page 35
The Baltimore Sun | Sunday, June 8, 2025 35
DIANA GRIBBON
MOTZ
Asked how the term “trailblazer” applies to her career, Diana Gribbon Motz smiles and shrugs.
“I was in the right place at the right time,” she says.
Last year, after nearly three decades of full-time service, Motz retired from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the highest judicial rung a Maryland federal case
can reach before landing in the Supreme Court.
When President Bill Clinton appointed her to the bench in 1994, Motz was the second female judge, and the first from Maryland, in the 4th Circuit’s 103-year
history. Now, six of its 15 active judges are women, including two from the Old Line State.
Despite similar disparities throughout her career
— she was one of only two women in her graduating
class at law school — Motz didn’t feel marginalized
because of her gender.
“I think there were circumstances where women
were treated differently and less favorably,” she said.
“And that’s why, although I have not suffered any kind
of discrimination because I was a woman practicing
law, I am very mindful that some were, and supportive
of efforts to be sure that everything is equal.”
A year after joining the 4th Circuit, Motz deemed
unconstitutional the admissions policies at the
Virginia Military Institute, which prevented women
from becoming cadets. When that choice threatened
its government funding, however, the college proffered a separate, “parallel” program for women off
campus.
The court was satisfied with that proposal, but
Motz wasn’t, writing that women don’t need equal
“results” but are entitled to “equal opportunity.” Her
position was cited and quoted by Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg when the Supreme Court ruled against
VMI — bringing a jolt of energy and confidence to
the new circuit judge.
“I thought, you know, I’m gonna have such a great
appellate life. This is gonna be great,” she quipped.
“Never happened again.”
But if she never quite reached that level of thrill
again, Motz said her time on the bench was (almost)
never boring.
“One of my firm beliefs about the law … you get
enough involved in any legal question, it’s interesting,” she said.
Born in Washington D.C., Diana Gribbon grew up
watching her father prepare cases for one of the city’s
premier law firms. Later, at a college-career crossroads, she thought, “I’d give it a try.”
She enrolled in the University of Virginia
Name: Diana Gribbon Motz
Age: 81
Hometown: Washington, D.C.
Current residence: Baltimore
Education: Stone Ridge School of the
Sacred Heart in Bethesda; Vassar College,
B.A.; University of Virginia School of Law, J.D.
Career highlights: Judge on the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the 4th Circuit; judge on the
former Maryland Court of Special Appeals;
assistant attorney general and chief of
litigation in the civil division of the Maryland
Attorney General’s Office
Civic and charitable activities: Board
member of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, the
Johns Hopkins University, YWCA of Greater
Baltimore, the Junior League of Baltimore
and Union Memorial Hospital
Family: Married to J. Frederick“Fred”
Motz (deceased); two children; three
grandchildren
School of Law in the mid-1960s, when women
made up less than 1% of the nation’s judiciary. But
compared with the all-women Vassar College in
New York, where she earned a history degree, the
male-dominated atmosphere at law school was less
competitive and more “laid-back,” she said.
It was there that she met her husband-to-be, J.
Frederick “Fred” Motz. And when they graduated,
he a year before she, they launched careers in Baltimore that led both to federal judgeships. Though
Motz would tease her husband as being “the most
conservative person” she knew, one colleague said
they didn’t land “so far apart on a lot of issues.”
“I think both of them, at their core, are neither
Republicans nor Democrats. … They’re both extraordinary lawyers,” said Ralph Tyler, a friend and lawyer
who worked alongside Motz for years.
After her first child was born, Motz left the private
sector and joined the Maryland Attorney General’s
Office in 1972. Her initial role focused on unemployment claims and was not considered “a good job,”
she said, but the law provided her the opportunity to
argue appeals before the state’s highest court.
She took that experience with her into more
diverse litigation for the attorney general’s civil
division, building cases around write-in presidential candidates and, in a prelude of sorts, tax breaks
for a men-only country club.
Perhaps her biggest case came in 1980, when Motz
pursued former Vice President Spiro Agnew, arguing
the bribes he took as Maryland’s governor belonged
to the state. When she prevailed, Motz kept a copy of
Agnew’s $268,482 return check on her wall for years.
“We had lots of fun doing those cases,” said Special
Appeals Judge Bob Zarnoch, who, like Tyler, worked
with Motz in the Attorney General’s Office. “It didn’t
matter if you were working weekends, evenings and
stuff. They were fun, and you thought that you were
doing something good in some of these cases.”
Motz’s abilities elevated her to chief of litigation,
where she oversaw all the attorney general’s civil
cases. Though she left the office in 1986 — she would
soon become the first attorney appointed to Maryland’s appellate court directly from the private sector
— her work with the state left an indelible impression.
“The state is filled with a generation, if not two
generations, of lawyers whom she trained and taught
to be lawyers,” Tyler said, considering himself among
them. “She led in the best possible way, by doing the
work herself at an exceptional level.”
— Luke Parker
