Charlotte’s emerging leaders: Susan Rodriguez is first woman to serve on federal bench
Name: Susan Courtwright Rodriguez
Age: 44
Title: U.S. District Court Judge for the Western District of North Carolina in Charlotte
Information: Susan C. Rodriguez this month became the first woman confirmed to serve on Charlotte’s federal court as an Article III judge — or trial judge — in the bench’s more than 150-year history. That role comes with a lifelong appointment. Her orders and opinions will shape Charlotte, North Carolina and the country over the next several decades.
What one thing about Charlotte do you most want to change?
As a federal judge, Rodriguez lives in neutrality. She interprets and applies the law, and she doesn’t campaign to change it. She thinks about Charlotte, where she has lived for more than a decade, in the same observational framework.
Except when it comes to traffic.
That’s one thing that could be tampered down.
What led you to judgeship?
“I always wanted to be a judge,” Rodriguez said. “I liked the idea of being neutral and hearing both sides and making a decision.”
She became the second woman to serve as a magistrate judge on Charlotte’s federal bench in 2023. She applied for that position when she was a partner at McGuireWoods LLP, where she helped lead the major firm’s financial institutions industry team.
That Big Law job came with a hefty paycheck, but “money’s not everything,” she learned from her childhood.
She wanted to serve the public. Now, she’ll do so for life.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced in this work?
Rodriguez served as a magistrate judge while the court was functioning with two fewer Article III judges than it should have had for more than two years. That put a strain on the court, and everyone had to pick up the slack.
At the same time, in 2024, Rodriguez was diagnosed with cancer.
She scheduled her treatments for Friday afternoons so she could preserve her energy for her time in court. Her job kept her going through six months of treatment, she said.
What do you want people to know about you?
“I came from very humble beginnings in rural Kentucky,” Rodriguez said.
She grew up making her own clothes and was the first in her family to go to college. Her father was a factory worker who woke up at 3:30 a.m. every day to travel more than an hour for a good paying job. Her mother was a homemaker who remains one of the most creative women Rodriguez knows. They knew the value of education, and it was never a question of if she was going to college — only where.
Rodriguez went to Centre College, a small liberal arts college in Danville, Kentucky, and studied history. There, she took a constitutional law class taught by an appeals court judge. He ushered her toward the country’s capital, and she listened.
She became an inaugural member of the Department of Homeland security, was hand-selected to work as a staffer in the White House Counsel’s office and served as federal law clerk in the district she now works in for Judge Frank D. Whitney.
“Here I am,” she remembers thinking. “This kid from rural Kentucky ... without any connections standing in the Capitol.”
Now, she sits alongside the same judges she prepared judicial nominations for while in the White House nearly 20 years ago.
