Judges with backgrounds that represent the experiences of all americans. That after study has shown Diverse Groups solve problems in a more thoughtful and innovative way, and arrive at more efficient and effective decisions and solutions. It comes as no surprise that diversity among our federal judges in terms of race and ethnicity, gender, Sexual Orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, and professional background helps produce a stronger Justice System. It places greater power in the hands of people who better understand the struggle to community the struggles of communities that have suffered this combination, and whose voices have been pushed to the margins of society. It is Crystal Clear that our current judicial system fails to capture the breadth of our experience. Hope you report that i will have copies of just released this morning by daniel , and grace, finds that 80 of sitting federal judges are white and that more than 60 are white males. There is a disturbing lack of racial diversity on federal benches and fewer than 1 of all federal judges identified as lgbtq. It is true that some president s in recent history took action to address these trends. Most notably, president barack obama and his administration. But since entering the white house, President Donald Trump has worked tirelessly to undermine and overturn such efforts. The trump administration, enabled by Mitch Mcconnell and senate republicans, has managed to confirm 152 of trumps judicial nominees, who are overwhelmingly white and male. 73 of trumps appointees have been male and more than 80 have been white. If progressives want to fully advance the causes we care so deeply about from protecting the rights of immigrants and people with disabilities, to expanding Affordable Health care and reforming our criminal justice improve the we must diversity of our federal courts. That is why cap is so proud to host todays event and welcome an esteemed panel of experts were committed to achieving this mission. Greathat, i have the pleasure of turning the program over to chris kang, the atounder and chief counsel demand justice, who will moderate our conversation. [applause] chris all right. Welcome to this very important conversation on diversity in our judiciary. I would like to introduce our esteemed panel. Directly to my right is dean danielle holleywalker, dean and professor of law at Howard University school of law, which, im sure you know, is the oldest historically black law school in the united states. She focuses her teaching on the federal court and inequality among education, among other subjects. Prior to joining the howard faculty, she was associate dean and distinguished professor of law at the university of south carolina. To her right, we have andrea senteno, the Regional Council at theional counsel Mexican AmericanLegal Defense and education fund, also known as maldef. Af she has been responsible for maldefs work with immigrant detention, administrative relief, and legislative proposals. Professorht, we have ganesh sitaraman, professor of law and director at vanderbilt. He recently wrote an article titled, how to save the Supreme Court. Acs017, he served as an academic advisor. He is also a senior fellow here at cap. Last but not least, sharon mcgowan, chief Strategy Officer in legal director at lambda committedorganization to achieving full rights for lgbtq individuals and People Living with hiv. She served in the obama ministration Obama Administration at the department of justice. Roleeceived awards for her of convincing the administration to stop defending the socalled defense of marriage act among another among many other initiatives. And,ve a very esteemed appropriately enough, Diverse Panel here, with a lot of experience. Studying the courts, looking at how the courts fit into our democracy. On the one hand, we probably all understand why we are here and why it is important. On the other hand, it is probably worth talking about why diversity on the federal bench is so important. I think that maybe one great way to think about this conversation is with sharon, because the Supreme Court will be considering cases on tuesday regarding whether or not people fired based on Sexual Orientation or gender identity. Probably about a dozen of our judges in the federal bench, identify as being lgbtq. I think that is a good way to think about the impact of diversity on our courts. Sharon, do you want to get started with why we are here . Sharon thank you very much. As i was telling our fellow panelists, we are in the countdown to the opening of the Supreme Courts term. We will have in argument on whichr title vii, prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, will also be determined to prohibit discrimination against gender identity. It is important to think about diversity within this context because this case is very much a straightforward statutory construction case. This is about whether or not the term sex covers discrimination. When i am fired for having a wife but my male coworker is not, or if i can lose my job because my boss found out i transitioned or was assigned a different sex at birth. In many ways, we would argue it shouldnt matter who is sitting in the chair when you are looking at terms in statutes or principles that are often well ingrained into our jurisprudence. But what we know is that who sits in the chair does matter. In way in which it plays out cases like the ones that will be heard on tuesday is that we have whot of work to do about lgbt people are, particular who transgender people are. We see people and the others making radical or divorced from facts arguments about who transgender people are, who the Lgbt CommunityLgbtq Community is. We have to assume that we have ifdo that work in a way that we had a full range of views, it might not be as necessary. When we think beyond the Supreme Court, to the courts of appeals where the overwhelming number of decided, there is an important moment of determining not just whether rights will be adjudicated fairly but also whether they will be treated with the respect they deserve. Wave after wave of judicial nominations often just being rubberstamped. We have individuals who are not even willing to commit that they will refer to litigants in the courtroom by the appropriate gender pronouns. We have appointments who are unwilling to confirm on the record that brown v. Board of education was correctly decided. President the precedents of even more recent vintage. Having individuals that are even capable of affirming some of the key precedents that have allowed us to make diversity and inclusion in our country is a sign of the precarious times we are in. Interestingis an point. You dont have to be an lgbtq person yourself to understand the discrimination, just like you dont have to be a woman to understand these rulings coming down. But i think it is important to build the confidence in our democracy. The other thing, we talk about diversity. Just having this conversation expands already the conversation around diversity which centers around gender, race, now Sexual Orientation, gender identity. There is not enough data yet around religion or people with disabilities. The other aspect that is important or overlooked when we think about diversity is professional diversity. We think about having a judiciary that represents the breadth of American People but also of the legal profession, having more professional diversity is important as well. I know, ganesh, you have done some thinking about this. Ganesh thanks first to cap for having us today and putting together this great report. It has some really arresting the statistics over time and just looking at the present. In terms of other kinds of diversity, we often talk about it but dont think through other ways we might think about diversity. Thatve a Supreme Court does a pretty good job of representing the different boroughs of new york city but not the different regions of the country. A Supreme Court does a great job of representing harvard and yale law school. It doesnt do a great job of representing the rest of the country. We have a Supreme Court in federal courts that do a great job of representing Corporate Lawyers, prosecutors, but not a great job of representing consumers,bor, public defenders. Those parts of those discussions are less part of the background of people who get to the federal bench. He might ask why it is important to have people from the west, the south, people who were public defenders, people who maybe had a different path to law school. Part of it is that every judge brings a lot of background to cases, to thinking about facts, and brings an expertise of a lifetime of work to different sectors. We want a federal bench that has a lot of experience with different areas of the law, has been thinking about and hearing different kinds of arguments. That is good for the rule of law, good for the kind of deliberation we want on courts and among judicial panels or within the Supreme Court. That is something we are lacking in need to think more about with appointments going forward. Christopher when we think about how we get a more diverse judiciary, to say President Trump is turning the clock back would be generous as he has the fewest people of color nominated since president reagan and has not yet confirmed a single africanamerican or hispanic judge to the Circuit Court. He is reaching record numbers of Circuit Court judges. None of them have been africanamerican or hispanic. And themaldef africanamerican leadership in particular have taken a role in noting the need for diversity, saying they would oppose all circuit judges until President Trump nominated an hispanic judge to the Circuit Court. And he has now done that. How you came to that position and what you will do now once now that donald trump has nominated a single latina to the court . Thank you for having me here. All of us are involved in our courts every day so making sure our courts are representative of america is important to everyone , historically underrepresented groups. The leadership agenda, a coalition of 45 Latino National organizations across the country who are invested in everything from civil rights to the environment to health care, we look at the issues that we care about, which are the issues that everybody cares about. The fact that this particular president has been so terrible on his record of nominating individuals from diverse backgrounds was just so absurd and unacceptable that we reached us, the really, for breaking point was that there was a retirement in the fifth circuit. The fifth circuit at the time had the highest proportion of latinos living in the circuit. Today, the fifth circuit is almost 30 latino. And there are no no circuit judges on the fifth circuit that are latino. We hit a point where we felt it was incredibly important that we stake out a position that articulated how absurd this is. We took the position that we would oppose all Circuit Court judges until and when the president nominated and senate confirmed, a wellqualified hispanic judge. The reason we said wellqualified, if you read the summarythere is a good of the need for diversity on different fronts. Substantiveversus is what i think it characterizes it as. Making sure youre able to stay percentto say we have x latino or hispanic judges on the bench. Looking at the judiciary as a whole, it is incredibly low compared to the general population for latinos. 6. 6 of all federal judges are latino and we are over 18 of the population. The Circuit Court judges, the number gets far worse, particular with this president and who he is nominated. Looking at both descriptive and substantive representative for our communities. Wellqualified is important for us. We look at the record. Judgey have not been a before, we look at the entirety of it we want descriptive diversity but we want to have substantive representation as well. We need to make sure that nobody understands civil rights law, employment cases, the importance of the challenges that workers face when they come to the court seeking to enforce the rights, that they understand voting rights, immigration law. All of these things are so important for our community. As anular for maldef organization that litigates, we need to know that the nominees being put forth and confirmed are qualified and confident and confident to handle and competent to handle the cases. Not just descriptive, we need to make sure the judge is being put up are not just being put up as tokens but that they will be good, neutral arbiters of justice. That is how we will review the record of the recent nominee, the 11thagoa, for circuit. Dontshameful that we have more nominees. That is not to say that even if she is confirmed, the work is done. This administration has a lot of work to do, and the country has a lot of work to do, to reach representation for all judicial positions. Christopher conservatives often defend the record of President Trump and even before that, president george w. Bush, who was a little bit at her but still nowhere little bit better but still nowhere near where he shouldve been. They say that the most important thing to them is judicial philosophy, which they say they mean originalism, adhering to a constitution that excluded women and people of color. To the extent that they are outcomedriven, can you blame them for having such a nondiverse judiciary . What will be the longterm president snly one nominees represent the diversity of this country and the others doesnt . I will throw it out to anybody for thoughts on that. Sharon, i know you have thoughts on everything. Your view that this has been an issue that has galvanized the right wing. They have had a long term game plan on this. It is not a coincidence that there are not necessarily binders full of women and people of color who are espousing their political philosophy. As you say, it is one that is not necessarily even consistently applied or genuine in its own terms because i think it is informed by certain outcomes is trying to achieve. I think what that means is that we need to make sure that when we are talking about diversity on the bench, we are challenging the narratives that i think we have seen and i find particularly troubling, that anybody who is coming from a straight white male background should automatically be viewed with some skepticism because they might be an activist, they might have an agenda. , who was notwalker out as an openly gay man when he was confirmed, but came out when he was on the bench, and they have now had somebody in this Administration Challenges ability to sit for a case on lgbt rights saying that he would inherently be biased. We saw Justice Baker motley face the same. I think inherent racism, homophobia, sexism comes into play. If you are white, male, straight, you were neutral. If you are not those things, you are presumptively biased, have an agenda. I think that plays out to the diversity of professions as well. The idea that somebody like Ruth Bader Ginsburg comes out of a background of aclu womens rights advocacy. No matter how wellestablished those cases now are in jurisprudence. We see what happened to a number of nominees in the Obama Administration, taking on clients that raised issues in the Justice System inherently became questions that they were unable to be fair and impartial administers of justice. Who can be fair, who is capable of being a good judge, and we need to think about the way that tracks along racism, homophobia, sexism, et cetera. Reporte one thing the does a good job of bringing up his this notion that being a judge is the pinnacle of many careers and our profession is doing a bad job of increasing diversity. We are at a point that the lack of diversity in the judiciary, yes it is about judicial philosophy, but at its core, it is about a lack of racial diversity and other kinds of diversity in our profession in general. Right now, only about 14. 5 of all lawyers are nonwhite. Our judiciary is likely to do better than that if we have a profession that better reflects the diversity of the united states. Only about 8 of all lawyers are africanamerican. Same statistic for asian american. About 5 of all lawyers are hispanic. One means our profession is that is not diverse. At the top of the profession including Law Firm Partners and judges, we will see a tremendous lack of diversity. One of the things the report really does is talk about lack of diversity in the judiciary. You cannot talk about it in isolation. There is no way to talk about it without talking about it in the legal profession. Until we address the systemic problems in our profession, we will never get to a point where we have a diverse judiciary. Taking about why this is so critical, there are also lots of norm eric there are whole fabric, our society and when you have the eroding of basic Democratic Institutions like the judiciary, you end up with chaos. We are seeing the results of that in racial diversity and other kinds. I think it is very key to establishing to litigants and even people who do not find themselves in the court system, you will see when you ask young people how they feel about going into our current criminal Justi