‘Angry Black Women’ Comment Gets Lawyer Disciplined, Again
A Michigan lawyer who’s also a local radio personality has been reprimanded for telling an officer during a hearing that she had “angry black women’s syndrome.”
Cliff Woodards, 55, engaged in “discourteous conduct” during a probation hearing in Wayne County Circuit Court, the Michigan Attorney Discipline Board found. Woodards, who is African American, also said to the probation officer “that’s why you don’t have a husband.”
Commenting on the Oct. 20 reprimand for his remarks, Woodards said Monday, “That’s the price you pay for being 55 and having no filter.”
The reprimand, first reported on Legal Profession Blog, follows an incident in which Woodards last year posted critical remarks on Facebook about the appearance of a female attorney at a public defender training session, which Woodards also attended.
Woodards, according to the website WDIV ClickOnDetroit, posted, “After watching yet another woman dressed up like a man, wearing sagging jeans, boxer briefs and sporting a mohawk, it finally
dawned on me to ask this question: Why you wearing men’s drawers, though? It’s not like your gonna need or use the flap. Do they make you feel more manly? I don’t understand.”
Woodard said those comments remain on his Facebook page.
In a separate incident, Woodards was reprimanded in 2010 after he admitted that he represented himself as an attorney while suspended from practice for nonpayment of bar dues.
He called the situation a “weird quirk,” in which a client’s court papers were filed in the brief period in which his dues had lapsed.
Woodards hosts “Your Turn,” weeknights at 7-9 p.m. on 910am Superstation in Detroit. He’s tried more than 100 felony cases, according to the station’s website, and graduated from Wayne State University Law School in 2001.
In the Oct. 20 decision, the Michigan Attorney Discipline Board found that Woodards “failed to treat with courtesy and respect a person involved in the legal process and failed to avoid treating that person discourteously or disrespectfully because of that person’s race and gender.”
Woodards was ordered to pay $750 in costs.