Strikes at the heart of our democratic values. If we truly believe that all americans deserve equal to men in the eyes of the law. Must ensure that our legal decisions made by judges who backgrounds and perspectives that represent the experiences of all americans. Study after study has shown that Diverse Groups solve problems in a more thoughtful and innovative way and arrived at more efficient and effective decisions. And solutions. So it comes as no surprise that diversity among our federal judges, in terms of their race and ethnic city in the gender and Sexual Orientation or gender identity, the really religious affiliation and the professional backgrounds, helps produce a stronger Justice System. Places greater power in the hands of people who better understand the struggles of communities that have suffered discrimination and his voices have been pushed to the margins of our society for is it too long. It is Crystal Clear that our current judicial system fails to capture the births of the american experience. In fact, a new cap report which i hope youll have copies of, released just this morning, by danielle ruth, jake, and grace, find that 80 percent ascending federal judges are white in the nearly 60 percent are white males. Right now, there is a disturbing lack the racial diversity on our federal benches and fewer than s identify as lgbt queue. Now its true, that some president s, in recent history took action to address these trends. Most notably president barack obama and his administration. But since injuring the white house President Donald Trump has worked tirelessly to undermine and overturn such efforts. The Trump Administration enabled Mitch Mcconnell and some republicans had managed to confirm 152 of trump his judicial nominees who are overwhelmingly white and male. In fact 73 percent of trump his appointees, have been there more than 80 percent having white. Progressives want to fully advance the causes, we care so deeply about, for protecting the rights of immigrants and people of disabilities to expanding affordable healthcare and reforming our criminal Justice System, that we must improve the diversity of our federal courts. Thats why kent is so proud to host todays if it and welcome an esteemed panel of experts who are committed to achieving this very mission. With that, i have the great pleasure of turning the program over to chris yang, the cofounder and chief counsel at the demand justice who will help moderate our conversation. Thanks everyone and please enjoy this important conversation. Come on up. [applause] [background sounds] all right, welcome to this very important conversation on diversity judiciary. I like to introduce our extent panel sitting directly to my right is dean Danielle Holly walker, she 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. Law professor, senator teaching on the federal courts and inequality in education among a number of other subjects. She also studied diversity in the Legal Profession prior to joining the howard faculty, shes an associate dean for Academic Affairs and a distinguished professor at at South Carolina and currently serves on the board of Lawyers Committee for civil rights. To her right we have an area in it was a Regional Council at the Mexican AmericanLegal Defense and Educational Fund better known as bullet and mulled up as one of the oldest but in legal rights, organization of the country and the overseas its litigation work in u. S. Court of appeals for the deepsea circuit fourth and 11th circuits is very possible for federal immigration policy work which includes issues related to enforcement immigrants attention and Administration Relief and ledges like depth proposals. To her right, where professor dennis, carmen, professor of law and chancellors met faculty and director of blood Government Program of the school. Is the recognized expert on federal court reform and written coauthored entitled how to save the Supreme Court. In 2017, appointed to the American Constitution Society for board of directors and served as an academic advisor. Hes also senior fellow at cap and last but certainly not least, to my far right is sharon mccown, she is chief strategy and then of legal the country his largest and oldest organization committed to achieving full recognition of civil rights for lgbt queue and People Living with hiv and previously she served in the obama ministration as a Principal Deputy chief of the Civil Rights Division of the department of justice. When youre in her time at doj, sharon was repeatedly recognized by the attorney general and reset the work words for her role in convincing the administration to stop defending socalled defense of a marriage act. Developing legal argue acts of Marriage Equality in them and other important initiatives. We have a very esteemed and appropriately enough Diverse Panel here. With a lot of experience. Sort of looking at how the course fit into our democracy and the one hand, i feel like we probably all understand why we are here, why its important to hear on the other hand, i think its probably worth taking a few minutes to talk about why diversity on the federal bench is so important. And i think maybe one great way to think about this conversation or start the conversation is by asking sharon, clause the Supreme Court is going to be considering cases on tuesday regarding their not people can be fired based on their Sexual Orientation or general identity and is what he mentioned, less than 1 percent i think about a dozen, a voracious federal judges identify as being lgbt queue so that sort of an interesting way to think about the impact and diversity so sharon would you like to get started for why we are here. They identify. Its interesting to think about traditional diversity in this context because this case is in many ways 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 whether i could lose my job because my boss finds out i had transitioned. And assigned a different sex at birth but im still the same person and able to do the job whether or not my employer is able to fire me. In many ways we would argue it shouldnt matter who is sitting in the chair when you are looking at terms in statutes or looking at principles often well ingrained into our jurisprudence. What we know is that who sits in the chair does matter. One way in which it plays out in cases like the ones going to be heard in front of the Supreme Court tuesday is that we have a lot of work to do to educate the court about who lgbt people are. Particularly who transgender people are. Because we see opponents on the other side making radical and completely divorce some fax arguments about who transgender people are, who the Lgbtq Community are, what giving full rights under the law would mean in terms of the praise of parables. We have to assume that we need to do that work in a way that if we had greater confidence that we had a judiciary that was representative of full range of community that it might not be as necessary. Its important when we think beyond the Supreme Court to the court of appeals where the overwhelming majority of the cases are decided since we know so few cases made to the Supreme Court and at the District Court as well where there is such an important moment of determining whether or not individuals will not only have their rights adjudicated fairly but whether or not they will be treated with respect and dignity they deserve. I think its quite interesting as weve seen the waves of judicial nominations working their way to the senate often rubberstamped by the judiciary in the full senate. We have individuals who are not willing to commit they will refer delinquent in her courtroom by the appropriate gender pronouns. We also know we have litigants who are unwilling to actually affirm on the record that brown versus board of education was correctly decided to stop for anyone who is relying on the rule of law and we obviously know that the lgbt president s a a having individuals who are not able to not only bring their Life Experience but even capable of actually affirming some of the key precedents that have allowed us to make progress with respect to diverse and inclusion in our country is a sign of the precarious times we are in i think thats an interesting point because you certainly dont have to be an lgbtq person yourself to find or understand the discrimination just like you dont have to be a person of color or a woman to have these rulings that have begun to calm down. I do think having that perspective is important to build confidence in our democracy. I think the other things we talk about diversity, i will say that just having this conversation expands already the conversation around diversity often centers around gender, such as around race, and always churches work about Sexual Orientation, gender identity, theres not enough report around religion or people with disabilities. I think as we think about having a judiciary that represents the breath of American People but also the breath of the Legal Profession having more professional diversity is incredibly important as well. Thank you for having us today and putting together this big report. I encourage people to take a look at it, it has really resting statistics over time. Just looking at the present. In terms of thinking about appointments to the federal bench. In terms of other kinds of diversity, we often talk about professional diversity but really dont interrogate fairly what that means or it think to other parts of how we might think about diversity. We have a Supreme Court that is pretty well does a great job of representing the different boroughs of new york city. For example, it does not do a great job of representing the different regions of the country. We have a Supreme Court that does a great job of representing Harvard Law School and Yale Law School stop it doesnt do a great job of representing the rest of the country. We have a Supreme Court and federal courts in general that do a great job of representing Corporate Lawyers, prosecutors, not a great job of representing workers, labor, consumers. Public defenders. Those kinds of professions are less part of the background of people who get to the federal bench. He might ask why is it important to have people from the west or the south people who are public defenders people who maybe had a different path from law school or their professions may be veterans, why is it important to have those people . Part of it is every judge brings a lot of background to cases to thinking about facts. In brings an expertise of a lifetime of work in different sectors. What we want is the federal bench that has a lot of experience with different areas of the law not just one area of the law thats representing different kinds of parties and thinking about and hearing different kinds of arguments. Thats good for the rule of law and the kind of deliberation we want on courts and among judicial panels within the Supreme Court. That is something we are lacking and need to think more about as we go through appointments going forward. When we think about how we get a more diverse judiciary, the same to say President Trump is turning the clock back would be generous as he does have the fewest people of color dominated since president reagan and has not yet nominated or not yet had confirmed a single africanamerican or hispanic judge to the Circuit Court. As he is reaching record pieces and record numbers of Circuit Court judges none of them have been African American or hispanic. I think mold off and the National Hispanic leadership agenda in particular has taken a leading role in noting the need for diversity and saying they would oppose all circuit judges until President Trump nominated hispanic judge to the Circuit Court and now hes done that im wondering if you can talk to us about how you guys came to that position and what you do now that President Trump is finally nominated a single latino to the Circuit Court and how you will evaluate her nomination. Thank you for having me here. This is such an important conversation for the entire country. All of us are invested in the integrity of our courts. Every single day. Making sure our courts are representative of america is incredibly important to everyone, not just racial minorities or other minorities and underrepresented historically underrepresented groups. For the National Hispanic leadership agenda which is a coalition of 45 Latino National organizations across the country who are invested in everything from civil rights to the environment to healthcare. We really looked at the issues we care about which are an issue that everybody cares about and the fact that this particular president has been so terrible on his record of nominating individuals from diverse backgrounds across all boards was so absurd and unacceptable. We reached a point and really for us the 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. So today the fifth circuit is almost 30 latino. There are no Circuit Court judges on the circuit abfor the us that really really hit a point where we felt like it was incredibly important that we stake out a position that clearly articulated how absurd this is. We took the position that we would oppose all Circuit Court judges until and when the president nominated and confirmed the Senate Confirmed a wellqualified Latino Latina judge. The reason why we say wellqualified is because as you read the report which i echoed sentiments to read it, has a lot of wonderful information in it but if you read the report particularly in part two theres a good summary of the need for diversity on different fronts. Descriptive diversity versus subsidence diversity i think is what it characterizes it as. What we are really getting is the descriptive diversity making sure that you are able to say yes we have x percent latino judges, hispanic judges on the bench which looking at the general judiciary as a whole is incredibly low compared to the general population for latinos. You got 6. 6 percent of all federal judges are latino and we are all over 18 percent of the population. As you look at the Circuit Court judges, the number gets far worse. Particularly of this president and who he is nominating. The representation for our community. Wellqualified is incredibly important to us. We look at the record of the judge or the nominee if they have not been adjudged before. We look at the entirety of it because what we are really getting to is, we want diversity on the bench. We want descriptive diversity but we need to have substantive representation on the bench as well. We need to make sure that nominee understands civil rights law understands in poignant cases, he understands the importance of the challenges that workers face when they come to the court seeking to enforce their right. But they understand voting rights, that they understand Immigration Law because all of these things are so important to our community and particularly as an organization that litigates we need to know that the nominees that are being put forth and being confirmed are those who qualify and competent to handle the cases we work on every single day. We are very much investing not just in descriptive representation we need to make sure those judges who are being put up are not just being put up as tokens but rather being put up because they are going to be good neutral arbiters of justice. Thats how we will review the record of the recent nominee Barbara Lebeau for the 11th circuit obviously that is a positive sign he has finally nominated someone. Its shameful its taken him that long its shameful we dont have one nominees who are representative of our country. Thats not to say that even if she is confirmed that the work is done, this administration has a lot of work to do this country has a lot of work to do to reach representation for all judicial positions. Conservatives often defend the record of