On July 31, 2014, President
Barack Obama nominated Burroughs to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts to the seat vacated by Judge
Rya W. Zobel, who had assumed
senior status on April 1, 2014. She received a hearing before the
United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary on September 17, 2014. On November 20, her nomination was reported out of committee by
voice vote. On December 13,
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed a motion to invoke
cloture on the nomination. On December 16, Reid withdrew his cloture motion on Burroughs's nomination and the Senate confirmed Burroughs by voice vote. She received her federal judicial commission on December 19
Notable cases Burroughs is most notable for her order that put a hold on President Donald Trump's travel ban in January 2017 (
Executive Order 13769) and for presiding over
United States v. Salemme,
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, and
United States v. Babich.
Salemme was the last major trial of
American Mafia members. In 2018, Francis Salemme (aka "Cadillac Frank") and co-defendant Paul Weadick were convicted of the murder of Steven A. DiSarro, who disappeared in 1993, and were sentenced to life in prison. In October 2018, Burroughs held a three-week bench trial in
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, a lawsuit challenging Harvard's admissions program as discriminatory against Asian Americans. A decision in favor of the university was announced on October 1, 2019.
United States v. Babich is a criminal case brought against several former executives of the pharmaceutical company
Insys Therapeutics. The government alleged that the executives violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (
RICO), 18 U.S.C. 1692
et seq., by engaging in a scheme to sell the fentanyl-based pain medication Subsys by bribing physicians to prescribe it. The indictments led to guilty pleas, including by former Insys CEO Michael Babich. The remaining defendants were tried from January through April 2019. All five remaining defendants, including former billionaire
John Kapoor, were convicted of racketeering. Burroughs also presided over a July 2020 lawsuit filed by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that sought to halt an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policy that required international students in the U.S. on F-1 visas to depart the country if they would not attend in-person classes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Burroughs announced that the Trump administration had agreed to reverse the policy during a July 14 hearing in her Boston courtroom. In December 2020, Burroughs presided over a lawsuit brought by five Republicans who lost state and federal legislative races in Massachusetts and sought to overturn the election results. At a December 2020 hearing, she said the plaintiffs' requested relief of invalidating the votes of millions of Massachusetts residents was "too late", "misplaced", and "terribly unfair". Burroughs has also presided over several
class actions related to consumer products.
In re Intuniv Antitrust Litigation concerned allegedly anticompetitive agreements between drug makers Shire and Actavis purportedly aimed at charging supracompetitive prices for an ADHD medication. Burroughs's class certification opinions in the matter (one opinion certifying a class of direct purchasers, and one declining to certify a class of indirect, consumer purchasers) are notable for their application of the predominance required for class certification where putative classes contain numerous uninjured members. In class actions against
Nestlé, The
Hershey Company, and
Mars Inc., Burroughs considered allegations that the companies violated Massachusetts product labeling laws by failing to disclose the use of slave
child labour in cocoa production. She dismissed the complaints against the companies in January 2019, a decision upheld by the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in June 2020. In September 2019, Burroughs also dismissed a class action suit that claimed the packaging of Honey Bunches of Oats cereal was misleading given the cereal's limited honey content. In February 2020, Burroughs ordered the release of certain grand jury materials related to the
Pentagon Papers. In April 2025, Burroughs issued a temporary restraining order blocking the
Department of Energy's 15% cap on indirect costs for higher education grants, citing "immediate and irreparable injury" to universities. The policy, which aimed to reduce federal spending by $405 million annually, was challenged by a coalition of academic institutions and associations, leading to the court's intervention. On May 23, 2025, Burroughs issued a temporary restraining order blocking the
United States Department of Homeland Security's revocation of
Harvard University's use of the
Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which facilitates enrollment of international students. On September 3, 2025, Burroughs ruled that the Trump administration had acted unconstitutionally and failed to follow due process when it froze more than $2.6 billion in research funding awarded to Harvard. On March 31, 2026, Burroughs ruled that the Trump administration's termination of the
CBP One app was unlawful and called for the reinstatement of
parole for hundreds of thousands of migrants who applied through the app. == See also ==