The late Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Photo by Jason Doiy

A former law clerk of the late Stephen Reinhardt on Thursday alleged the former judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit repeatedly harassed her as she worked for him in 2017 and 2018.

In her written testimony at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on sexual misconduct in the federal judiciary, Olivia Warren said she was not there "to destroy Judge Reinhardt's legacy, to erase his significant contributions to the law, or to condemn him."

Rather, Warren testified that she was there to describe her difficulties in reporting her concerns, after the repeated harassment by the late judge.

Reinhardt, who died in 2018, sat alongside former Judge Alex Kozinski, who retired in 2017 amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Reinhardt, known as a "liberal lion" on the bench, called Kozinski's retirement "a great loss to the court."

Warren, now a staff attorney with the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, testified on Thursday that on her first day as a clerk for Reinhardt, she encountered a sine chart with "two round dots to the top of the curves such that the chart resembled a woman's breasts." She said Reinhardt had added the dots.

"In addition to emphasizing how proud he was of the nipples he had drawn on the chart and confirming that he and the clerk had made it, he asked me a question about whether or not it was 'accurate,'" the testimony reads. "Based on his tone and demeanor, I understood his question to be asking whether or not the drawing looked like my breasts."

Warren testified that Reinhardt would give her photos of female law clerk applicants and say "which candidate was more attractive and which candidate had nicer or longer legs."

And she alleged that the judge "routinely and frequently made disparaging statements about my physical appearance, my views about feminism and women's rights, and my relationship with my husband (including our sexual relationship)."

"Often, these remarks included expressing surprise that I even had a husband because I was not a woman who any man would be attracted to. In that vein, Judge Reinhardt often speculated that my husband must be a 'wimp,' or possibly gay," Warren testified. "Judge Reinhardt would use both words and gestures to suggest that my 'wimp' husband must either lack a penis, or not be able to get an erection in my presence."

A spokesperson for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said no one should suffer the kind of harassment Warren described in her testimony. "We are deeply concerned about the new information we have learned through Ms. Warren's statement, and we take her statement very seriously. We are committed to addressing this new information and continuing to refine our processes and procedures for protecting our employees and addressing misconduct," the spokesperson said.

Warren also testified Thursday that Reinhardt's comments reached a new level as the "Me Too" movement gained momentum in late 2017.

"He frequently discussed and always cast doubt upon credible allegations of sexual  harassment. The doubts he expressed were sometimes based on his assessment of the attractiveness of the accuser, and sometimes based on his general incredulity that men could be harassing women," Warren testified. "For example, Judge Reinhardt told me that the allegations of sexual harassment that came out against people like Louis CK and Harvey Weinstein were made by women who had initially 'wanted it,' and then changed their minds."

She testified that when she tried to change Reinhardt's mind by telling him of past sexual harassment she experienced, the judge "became enraged."

"He yelled at me to stop speaking, and said that none of what I had just said was true. He explained to me that I had never been sexually harassed because no one had ever been sexually attracted to me," Warren wrote in her written testimony. "He said that to the extent that I believed I was sexually harassed, it was because men wanted to silence me and used harassment to do so—which, he added, was within their rights to free speech."

Warren further testified that when the allegations of sexual misconduct first emerged against Kozinski, Reinhardt told her "that women were not to be trusted and that he did not ever want to be alone in a room with a female law clerk again; he suggested that he would not hire any more female clerks or other female employees for these reasons."

"Judge Reinhardt also repeatedly told me that he intended to publicly confront one of the women who accused Judge Kozinski at an event at UC-Irvine, with the intention of humiliating or silencing her," Warren testified. "I later learned that when he met the woman at the event, he pointedly and publicly insulted her intellect."

Reinhardt died while Warren was still clerking for him. She described crying deeply at his memorial service.

And after his death, Warren testified that she struggled in reporting her worries about sexual harassment of law clerks to the proper authorities. She said there were not proper channels in place for her to be able to relate her concerns to the federal judiciary.

"If you feel the system is stacked against you, it's because it is," Warren told lawmakers on Thursday.