Thomas Moukawsher (born 1962) is an American judge, legal scholar, political activist and legal writer. He is currently a judge of the Connecticut Superior Court.
Early life and education
Moukawsher was born in 1962 in New London, Connecticut. He attended The Citadel military college where he served as a member of the school’s honor court, graduating in 1983, after attending three years, and with high honors. Moukawsher then attended the University of Connecticut School of Law where he served on the board of the Connecticut Law Review and the Connecticut Moot Court Board, graduating with honors in 1986.
Career
During law school, Moukawsher served a year in the office of Connecticut Governor William A. O'Neill as an intern and a paid law clerk. In 1985 he became a lobbyist for the Connecticut Bankers Association, serving until he was elected to the Connecticut General Assembly in 1990. Prior to his election to the state legislature, Moukawsher was elected to two terms on the Town Council of Groton, Connecticut. After losing a state senate race in 1992, Moukawsher became special counsel to Connecticut Senate president pro tempore John B. Larson whom he served there and as an outside counsel after Larson’s election to Congress in 1998, including during his tenure as chair of the House Democratic Caucus during the 111th and 112th United States Congress. Moukawsher served for eighteen years on the Democratic State Central Committee of Connecticut and also served two terms as counsel to the Democratic Party of Connecticut.
Moukawsher’s law practice ultimately focused on federal-court fiduciary litigation under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). From 1991 to 2013 he litigated pension fraud and fiduciary litigation on behalf of plans and plan participants in thirteen U.S. District Courts and seven United States Courts of Appeals. His victories included a win before an eleven-member en banc panel of the San Francisco, California-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Bins v. Exxon and as co-counsel to a class that won a landmark favorable ruling from the United States Supreme Court in 2011 in CIGNA v. Amara.
In practice Moukawsher was a regular lecturer on ERISA litigation. He served as co-chair of the American Bar Association's Committee on Employee Benefits and as a co-author and editor of its book, Employee Benefit Law. He served as a fellow of the American College of Employee Benefit Counsel. He is a sustaining life fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
Judgeship
Moukawsher was nominated to be a judge of the Connecticut Superior Court in 2013 by Governor Dannel P. Malloy. He assumed office on March 6, 2013 and served for a year in the Court’s Criminal Division as the presiding judge of an experimental drug crimes docket in Danielson, Connecticut. Moukawsher ultimately presided over criminal, civil, housing, and family cases before his transfer to the Hartford Judicial District in 2015.
For eight of his ten years on the bench Moukawsher has presided over complex litigation. From 2015 to 2021, Moukawsher was a complex civil litigation judge in Hartford, Connecticut.
In 2016, he was the author of a nationally-quoted decision on a challenge to the constitutional adequacy of the Connecticut education system in CCJEF v. Rell. Moukawsher held the system was adequately funded, but held that state policies concerning the distribution of aid, the evaluation of teachers, and special education were all deficient under the Connecticut Constitutional provision guaranteeing all students a free public education. Moukawsher labelled the state's high school graduation standard "a sugar-cube boat. It dissolves before it's half launched." He was described by the New York Times as a "New England judge with a Southerner's flair for metaphor," saying that he "criticized 'uselessly perfect teacher evaluations' as part of a rating system 'that is little more than cotton candy in a rainstorm.'" The New Yorker described Moukawsher's case as a "smartly written, sometimes sardonic, and unusually pointed ninety page opinion." In 2018, by a 4-3 vote, the Connecticut Supreme Court upheld Moukawsher’s first ruling about funding levels and overturned the second ruling on policy inadequacies, leaving state policies unchanged.