CIT Shoots for Mid-July Reopening, Holds First In-Person Oral Argument

The Court of International Trade plans to bring about half of its staff back to its Foley Square location in New York by mid-July, Chief Judge Mark Barnett told Trade Law Daily. The court has not had a scheduled staff presence in its building since March 2020, with certain staff members entering the building on an ad hoc basis, the judge said. The goal is a "sustained reopening" with half of the employees continuing to telework for a few months beginning this summer.

The court has already begun to ease its way into a more in-person environment, with Judge Jane Restani holding an oral argument in the court chambers on May 18. Precautions prompted her to quip, "Looks like we have enough plexiglass to protect everybody." Restani instructed participants to remove their masks when speaking at the chamber's podium.

Barnett, who assumed the role of chief judge on April 5, has found the early days of his tenure dominated by the question of how to transition out of the "maximum telework" environment in which the court currently finds itself. "If you spoke to any chief judge across the country, that’s what’s occupying a fair degree of our administrative time," he said. "There’s just a lot of different angles to it. There’s staff, you need to think about them. You need to think about what it means in terms of proceedings and how they’re conducted. You need to think about participants in those proceedings and what their status may be, their ability to be in person or not for various reasons. The general safety of everybody involved and what the best thing is." Fortunately, Barnett said, while the circumstances of scheduling a reopening are always changing, recently all the trends have been in a positive direction toward reopening.