Stefan R. Underhill

Stefan R. Underhill (born June 9, 1956) is the Chief United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut.

Born in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1956, after earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1978 from the University of Virginia and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oxford University (Merton College, Oxford) in 1981, he received a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School, after which he clerked for Judge Jon O. Newman of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He was in private practice in Stamford, Connecticut in 1984 and from 1985 to 1999.

Underhill was nominated by President Bill Clinton to fill a seat on the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut vacated by Peter Collins Dorsey on January 26, 1999 and was confirmed by the United States Senate on June 30, 1999. He received his commission on July 7, 1999. He became Chief Judge in September 2018.

In a decision that received great notoriety, Underhill ruled in 2010 that cheerleading could not be used by Quinnipiac University to replace women's volleyball as a female sport to satisfy Title IX requirements (Biediger, et al., v. Quinnipiac University).

Underhill teaches a course on Federal Courts as an adjunct professor at University of Connecticut School of Law, and a course on Federal Sentencing at the University of Virginia School of Law. In the spring, he frequently teaches a complex litigation practicum at Yale Law School.

• Stefan R. Underhill at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.