November 1, 1977

The U.S. Senate confirmed Elsijane Trimble Roy as the first woman federal district court judge in the Eighth Circuit, as recommended by Senators Dale Bumpers and John L. McClellan and nominated by President Jimmy Carter. Roy occupied the position for twenty-one years, taking senior status in 1989 and retiring in 1999. Making history throughout her life, Roy was Arkansas’s first woman circuit judge, the first woman on the Arkansas Supreme Court, the first woman appointed to an Arkansas federal judgeship, the first woman federal judge in the Eighth Circuit, and the first Arkansas woman to follow her father as a federal judge.