Transcripts For CSPAN3 Federal Judges Discussion At Center F

CSPAN3 Federal Judges Discussion At Center For American Progress July 13, 2024

System. Good morning, everyone. My name is winnie stack lburg, and im the executive Vice President of external affairs at the center for American Progress, and i want to thank each and every one of you for joining this very important event. Were here to discuss a fundamental issue, which strikes at the heart of our democratic values. If we truly believe that all americans deserve equal treatment in the eyes of the law, then we must ensure that our legal decisions are made by judges with 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 arrive 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 ethnicity, their gender, their Sexual Orientation, their gender identity, their religious affiliation and their professional background helps produce a stronger justice system. It places greater power in the hands of people who better understand the struggles of communities that have suffered discrimination and whose voices have been pushed to the margins of our society for too long. It is Crystal Clear that our current judicial system fails to capture the breadth of the american experience. In fact, a new cap report, which i hope you all have copies of, a new cap report released just this morning by danielle root, finds that 80 of sitting federal judges are white and that nearly 60 are white males. Right now there is a disturbing lack of racial diversity on our federal benches and fewer than 1 of all federal judges identify as lgbtq. 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 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 have managed to confirm 152 of trumps judicial nominees who are overwhelmingly white and male. In fact, 73 of trumps appointees have been male and more than 80 have been white. And 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 system, then we must improve the diversity of our federal courts. Thats why cap is so proud to host todays event and to 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 kang, the cofounder and chief counsel at demand justice, who will help moderate our conversation. Thanks to everyone and please enjoy this important conversation. Come on up. Thanks, chris. [ applause ] all right. Welcome for this very important conversation on diversity in our judiciary. Id like to introduce our esteemed panel. Sitting directly to my right is Danielle Holly walker. Shes 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. As a law professor, she centers her teaching on the federal courts and inequality and education among a number of other subjects. She also studies diversity in the Legal Profession. Prior to joining the howard faculty she was the associate dean for Academic Affairs at the university of South Carolina and currently serves on the board of the Lawyers Committee for civil rights. To her right we have andrea senteno, who is the regional counsel at the Mexican American Legal Defense and educational fund. It is one of the oldest latino legal rights organizations in the country, andrea oversees the litigation work for the u. S. Court of appeals for the d. C. Circuit, fourth and 11th circuits. Shes been responsible for federal policy immigration work including issues related to enforcement, administrative relief and legislative proposals. To her right we have professor ganesh sitatarmin, director of law and government at vanderbilt law school. Hes an expert on court reform and coauthored an article entitled how to save the Supreme Court. In 2017 he was appointed to the American Constitution Societys board of directors and serves as an acs academic adviser. Hes also a senior fellow here at cap, and last but certainly not least, to my far right is sharon mcgowen. Sharon is the chief Strategy Officer and legal director at land legal, the countrys largest and oldest Legal Organization committed to achieving full recognition of civil rights for lgbtq people and individuals living with hiv. Previously she served in the Obama Administration as the Principal Deputy chief of the appellate section of the Civil Rights Division at the department of justice. During retirement from doj sharon was repeatedly recognized by the attorney general and received awards for her role in convincing the administration to stop defending the socalled defense of marriage act developing legal arguments in support of nationwide Marriage Equality among a number of other important initiatives. As you can see, we have a very esteemed and appropriately enough Diverse Panel here with a lot of experience before courts, studying the courts, sort of looking at how the courts fit into our democracy, and on the one hand, i feel like we probably all understand why were here and why its important to be here. On the other hand, i think its probably worth taking a few minutes to really talk about why diversity on the federal bench is so important. I think that maybe one great way to think about this conversation or to start this conversation is by asking sharon because the Supreme Courts going to be considering cases on tuesday regarding whether or not people can be fired based on their Sexual Orientation or gender identity and as winnie mentioned, less than 1 , i thik probably about a dozen of our nations federal judges identify as being lgbtq, and so i think that thats sort of an interesting way to think about the impact and really necessity of diversity on our court. So sharon, do you want to get started for why were here . Absolutely. Thank you so much, chris, and thank you to cap for having us. As i was telling our fellow panelists, we are in the countdown to the opening of the Supreme Courts term, and on the second day of the term we will, in fact, have a full day of argument on the question of whether title 7, the federal employment discrimination law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex will be understood as also reaching claims of discrimination against someone for their Sexual Orientation who are they are attracted to or their gender identity, how they identify. And its interesting to think about Judicial 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 can lose my job because my boss finds out that i had transitioned and had been assigned a different sex at birth, but im still the same person and able to do the job but whether or not my employer is able to fire me. So in many ways we would argue it shouldnt matter who is sitting in the chair when you are looking at terms and statutes or looking at principles that are often well, well engrained into our jurispruden jurisprudence. What we know is who sits in the chair does matter. One way it plays out in cases like the ones that are going to be heard on tuesday is 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, you know, radical and completely divorced from facts arguments about who transgender people are, who the Lgbtq Community is, what giving us full rights under the law would mean in terms of the praise of and we have to assume that we need to do that work in a way that if we had greater confidence that if we had a judiciary that was representative of full ranges of community that work might not be as necessary. I also think its important when we think just beyond the Supreme Court to the courts of appeals where the overwhelming majority of these cases are decided since we know so few cases make it to the Supreme Court and at the District Court as well where theres 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 the respect and the dignity they deserve, and i think its quite interesting as we have seen the waves and waves of judicial nominations working their way through the senate, often just being rubber stamped by the Judiciary Committee and the full senate, we have individuals who are not even willing to commit that they will refer to litigants in their courtroom by their appropriate gender pro nouns. We also know that we have litigants who are unwilling to actually affirm on the record that brown versus board of education was correctly decided. For anyone who is relying on the rule of law, we obviously know that the lgbt precedents are even more recent vintage than cases like brown versus board of education. So having individuals who are not sort of able to not only sort of 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 diversity and inclusion in our country is a sign of the precarious times that we are in. Thanks, and i think thats an interesting point because you certainly dont have to be an lgbtq person yourself to find or to understand the discrimination just like you dont have to be a person of color or a woman to sort of have these rulings that have begun to come down, but i do think that having that perspective is important to build the confidence in our democracy. I think that, you know, the other than things we talk about diversity, and i will say too that just having this conversation expands already the conversation around diversity often centers around gender. It centers around race. Now were starting to talk about Sexual Orientation, gender identity. As the report notes, theres not enough data yet around religion or people with disabilities. But then the other aspect that i think is important and somewhat overlooked when we think about diversity is professional diversity, and i think that that is as we think about having a judiciary that represents the breadth of american people, but also the breadth of the Legal Profession having more professional diversity is incredibly important as well, and i know youve done some thinking about thisment i wonder if you can talk about this. Thanks so much, and thanks first to cap for having us today and for putting together this great report. I encourage people to take a look at it. It has some really arresting statistics over time and just looking at the present in terms of thinking about appointments to the federal bench. In terms of, you know, other kinds of diversity, we often talk about professional diversity, but really dont interrogate fully what that means or think through other parts about how we might think about diversity. We right now have a Supreme Court that is pretty well does a great job of representing the different boroughs of new york city, for example, 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, doesnt do a great job of rempresenting the rest of th country. We have a Supreme Court that and we have federal courts in general that do a great job of representing Corporate Lawyers, prosecutors, but not a great job of representing workers, laborer consumers, public defenders. Those kinds of professions are less part of the background of people who get to the federal bench, and so you might ask why is it important to have people from the west or the south, the people who were public defenders, people who, you know maybe had a different path from law school or through their professions, maybe were veterans. Why is it important to have those people . And part of it is that every judge brings a lot of background to cases, to think about facts, and brings an expertise of a lifetime of work in different sectors, and so what we want is a federal bench that has a lot of experience with different areas of the law, not just one area of the law that has been representing different kinds of parties and thinking about and hearing different kinds of arguments, and thats good for the rule of law. Its good for the kind of deliberation that we want on courts and among judicial panels within the Supreme Court, and thats something that were lacking and we need to think more about as we go through appointments going forward. 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 does have the fewest people of color nominated since president reagan and has not yet nominated or not yet confirmed a single africanamerican or hispanic judge to the Circuit Courts, or as hes reaching record paces and record numbers of Circuit Court judges, none of them have been africanamerican or hispanic, and i think that maldaf and the National Hispanic leader agenda in particular has taken a role in noting the need for diversity and saying that they would oppose all circuit judges until President Trump nominated a hispanic judge to the Circuit Court and now hes now done that. Im sort of wondering if you can talk about how you guys came to that position and sort of what you do now that President Trump has finally nominated a single latina to the Circuit Court, and sort of how you will evaluate her nomination . So 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, and so making sure that our courts are representative of america is incredibly important to everyone, not just to racial minorities or other minorities in historically under represented groups. And so 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 health care, we really looked at the shissues w care about, which are the issues 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 just so absurd and unacceptable that we reached a point and will realreally for ug 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, and so today the fifth circuit is almost 30 latino, and there are no, no Circuit Court judges on the fifth circuit that are latino, and for us that 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. And so 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 or latina judge. And the reason why we say wellqualified, is because as you read the report, which i echo the sentiments to please read it, it has a lot of wonderful information. If you read the report, particularly in part two, there is a good summary of the need for diversity on different fronts, descriptive diversity versus substantive diversity i think is what it what it characterizes it as, and so what were really getting there is that descriptive diversity making sure that you are able to say, yes we have x percent, you know, latino jundges, hispanic judges on the bench. Looking at the general judiciary as a whole is incredibly low compared to the general population for latinos. Youve got 6. 6 of all federal judges are latino, and we are almost we are over 18 of the population. Again, as you look at the Circuit Court judges, the number gets far, far worse, and particularly this president and who he is nominating. So looking at both descriptive and substantive

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