Many Federal Courts have Only Ever Had White Judges.
We deserve a country where the administration of law reflects not just our hope for justice, but our common struggle against racial hierarchy.
As we’ve said here before, President Joe Biden has made great strides to diversify our federal courts. We now have the first Latina to serve as a federal judge in the state of Illinois, and the first South Asian woman to serve on the District Court for the District of Columbia.
But we still have a long way to go if our courts are to properly reflect the full diversity of our nation.
When all vacancies are filled, our federal courts have 870 judges in total:
One Supreme Court with nine justices,
13 circuit courts with 179 judges,
94 district courts with 673 judges and
One Court of International Trade with nine judges
The vast majority of federal judges are the district judges that preside over trial courts, where most citizens come face-to-face with a judge.
Strikingly, of the 94 district courts across our country, 25 have never had a non-white judge.
That includes mostly white states like Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont and Wyoming.
A recent Bloomberg report profiled the Southern District of Georgia, where nearly a third of residents are Black, but the court remains all white.
For the longest time, most judges have come from legal careers at large corporate law firms or prosecutors’ offices, while other legal backgrounds — like legal aid offices that serve the common good and are more often populated by people of color — were not seen as viable paths to a judicial nomination.
This approach privileged not only white lawyers, who had greater access to the traditional career paths, but also more men.
If we want to see more women, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities and people of color on the bench, we have to look to movement lawyers to find them.
Fortunately, many of these all-white districts have vacancies that Biden and the Senate could fill before the end of 2024.
The are states where a Republican senator holds a veto. Traditionally, Republicans have advanced nominees who are predominantly white and male.
Old senatorial privilege should give way to the needs of the citizenry to see themselves reflected in the rule of law.
Such a country will never be fully realized until our full diversity can don the black robes of an impartial judiciary. Indeed, if we want to get to the point where diversity is the norm on our courts and no longer a novelty, we must be intentional about reaching the day where we can say every court is magnificently diverse.
Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go.