[1] Voorhees served three years on the board of the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C.[1] He wrote a manual for judges, Recurring Problems in the Trial of Criminal Actions.
[citation needed] Of Voorhees' rulings during his twelve years on the Federal bench, none was considered more noteworthy than the 1986 decision in which he found that the Government improperly concealed evidence from the courts at a 1944 hearing on whether there was a military necessity to remove Japanese Americans from their homes in the Western states to internment camps.
The ruling overturned the conviction of Gordon K. Hirabayashi, who had fought exclusion, and was viewed by Japanese Americans as a landmark vindication of their long-held belief that their civil rights were violated during the war.
[2] Voorhees also issued a major ruling in a school desegregation case in 1979 when he overturned an anti-busing initiative approved by Washington State voters.
That ruling, upheld by the Supreme Court, allowed the Seattle school district to carry out its desegregation plan.