Shirley Ann Mount Hufstedler (August 24, 1925 – March 30, 2016) was an American attorney and judge who served as the first United States Secretary of Education from 1979 to 1981.

At the time of her presidential cabinet appointment under President Jimmy Carter, she was the highest ranking-woman in the U.S. federal judiciary.

She served as Special Legal Consultant to the Attorney General of California in the complex Colorado River litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court from 1960 to 1961.

In 1961, she was appointed Judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, by Governor Pat Brown.

At the time she was appointed to the Los Angeles County Superior Court, she was the only female in a group of 119 men.

[7] Hufstedler was nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 17, 1968, to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, to a new seat authorized by 82 Stat.

[8] In 1973, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided in Lau v. Nichols that the San Francisco Unified School District had not violated the Fourteenth Amendment when it provided inadequate supplemental language support for non-English speakers.

Hufstedler was not a member of this panel, but she called for the case to be reheard by the entire Ninth Circuit Court, en banc.

[17] Hufstedler was considered to be a candidate for the Supreme Court if a vacancy had occurred under the Jimmy Carter presidency.

They include: Her awards include: In 2021, the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology voted to remove Robert Andrews Millikan's name from everything that was named in his honor on the Caltech campus due to Millikan's involvement with the Human Betterment Foundation and the eugenics movement.