“Common english is to use the masculine pronoun when the sex of the person is unknown.”
The judge’s name is Holly. You don’t have to click on the article.
I agree with you re “the masculine pronoun as per the MLA’s common practice”. When people do the ol’ “he/she” politically correct thing, it makes me crazy. It’s “HE” if gender is unknown. They’ve ruined our language!!!
The name Holly is not in the FreeRepublic post title and I did not even read the excerpt. To that end, I did not even know the judge’s name nor do I care of the name or sex.
Given the info I had or cared to learn, I wrote a proper MLA sentence.