His former law firm Jones Day was hired to handle Detroit's bankruptcy. The pick has been criticized as a conflict of interest (Jones Day represents several of Detroit's creditors like Bank of America) and the firms billing rates of up to $1,075 per hour and large travel expenses have been questioned. Yet some legal scholars have opined that no conflict existed between Orr and his former employer. Orr has said of his former employer, "if I didn’t have Jones Day, I might have had to hire six to eight additional firms." On December 3, 2013, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes ruled that Detroit was legally entitled to pursue bankruptcy. By the summer of 2014, thousands of Detroit residents per week were being denied access to running water in their homes. On July 28, 2014, Orr signed Emergency Manager Order No. 31, further clarifying the roles of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department and the Board of Water Commissioners, in part: "the EM has determined that, at the present time, it is in the best interest of the City that the Mayor be granted the power and authority that the mayor would have had with respect to the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department ("DWSD") and the Board of Water Commissioners for DWSD ("BOWC") absent PA 436 in order to aid the EM in providing necessary governmental services essential to the public health, safety and welfare" of its residents. On November 7, 2014, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes approved Orr's plan for the city of Detroit. On December 10, 2014, Governor Snyder announced that Detroit had emerged from bankruptcy, and that he had accepted Orr's resignation as emergency manager, returning control of Detroit to its elected government. Orr was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Orr's father, Allen Eugene Orr, was an "A.M.E. minister who marched to support the rights of south Florida's African-American minority in the 1960s and 1970s"; his mother, Dorothy Jackson, was a teacher who eventually became an administrator in the office of Broward County's superintendent of schools. In 1990, the "Miami Herald" listed Orr as one of the area's "Most Eligible Men." Since 2004, he has been married to Dr. Donna Neale, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland; they began dating in 1994. They have a son named Kevyn and a daughter named Alexandra.