# Lewis A. Kaplan Senior U.S. District Judge for the **Southern District of New York**, on the bench since 1994 and the judge who has handled an unusually large share of the cases where private wrongdoing, celebrity and federal power intersect. Born in Staten Island in **1944**, Kaplan took his A.B. at the University of Rochester (1966) and his J.D. at Harvard Law School (1969), clerked on the First Circuit, and spent twenty-four years in private practice in New York — latterly as a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison — before [[Bill Clinton]] nominated him on **May 5, 1994**. The Senate confirmed him **August 9, 1994**; he took senior status on **February 1, 2011** and has kept a full docket since. ## Why he appears repeatedly in this vault Kaplan's docket is the reason his name recurs rather than any ideological profile. Three strands: - **[[Donald Trump]] as a civil defendant.** Kaplan presided over both E. Jean Carroll trials (2023 and January 2024) — see [[E. Jean Carroll Defamation Verdicts]] — including the ruling rejecting the [[Department of Justice]]'s attempt to substitute the United States as defendant on the theory that Trump's denials were official acts. The D.C. Circuit later agreed the statements were personal, making the holding part of the presidential-immunity line that runs into *[[Trump v. United States]]*. - **Crypto and financial fraud.** He tried *United States v. Bankman-Fried* beginning **October 3, 2023** — see [[Sam Bankman-Fried Collapse Timeline]]. - **Detention and the executive.** He handled the 2010–11 prosecution of Ahmed Ghailani, the first Guantanamo detainee tried in an Article III court, and since 2025 has overseen the litigation over ICE's holding facility at 26 Federal Plaza. ## 26 Federal Plaza, September 24, 2026 The ruling that brings Kaplan into the [[ICE]] material. In litigation begun in **August 2025** over the holding rooms at **26 Federal Plaza** in lower Manhattan, Kaplan ruled on **September 24, 2026** that the conditions there were **"inhumane and unconstitutional."** The rooms were built for custody of **twelve hours or less** and have no showers, no beds, no cots and no windows. ICE was holding many more people in them, for far longer. > [!quote] Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, September 24, 2026 > "By detaining far more persons in the hold rooms than ever was intended and for far longer than ever was intended, ICE objectively deprived detainees of sleep, sanitary living conditions, basic personal hygiene needs, sufficient food and water, and adequate medical care." Two findings in the opinion go beyond conditions. Kaplan held that ICE's disregard of his earlier capacity limits had been **"persistent, egregious, and, at a minimum, reckless, if not willful,"** and that the agency "repeatedly has violated this Court's orders either by intentionally flouting them or by employing so-called 'best' efforts that simply have not been good enough." He also found the testimony of an ICE field office assistant director **not credible**. The remedy is unusually specific — a floor written in units a warden can be held to rather than a standard a lawyer can argue about: **50 square feet per person** excluding the toilet area, temperature between **68 and 74°F**, three meals a day with bottled water, soap and hygiene supplies, clean bedding and a pillow and blanket for anyone held overnight, lights dimmed overnight, a **licensed medical professional on site at all times**, basic medical screening, and confidential, unmonitored, free calls to counsel. > [!note] Why the specificity is the holding > A judge who writes "adequate space" gets another year of argument about what adequate means. A judge who writes "50 square feet" has converted a constitutional standard into a number that can be measured on a surprise inspection — which is what a court does when it has already concluded that the agency in front of it will not comply with anything looser. The detail is a finding about ICE's credibility, expressed as an order. ## Pattern relevance Kaplan's 2026 ruling sits on the same axis as the [[Government Accountability Office]]'s September 24 audit of ICE's detention spending: an agency given $45 billion and no plan produces both unused tents at Guantanamo and hold rooms without soap. It also sits alongside the other September 2026 judicial checks on immigration enforcement — the First Circuit's [[Third-Country Removal]] ruling, and the district court orders on [[ICE]] shootings and body cameras. The common finding across them is not that the policies are unlawful in the abstract but that the agency **does not comply with orders it has already received**, which is the finding that changes what remedies courts will write. ## See Also - [[ICE]] · [[Department of Homeland Security]] · [[Third-Country Removal]] · [[Government Accountability Office]] - [[E. Jean Carroll Defamation Verdicts]] · [[Donald Trump]] · [[Trump v. United States]] - [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] · [[Sam Bankman-Fried Collapse Timeline]] - [[Timothy Kelly]] · [[James Boasberg]] · [[Tanya Chutkan]]