As confirmation hearings get underway this week to possibly select the first Black woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, trailblazers in Colorado’s legal community are taking this moment to magnify what some say is a disturbing lack of diversity among the state’s judges.  

There are no Black justices on the Colorado Supreme Court or the Court of Appeals even though African Americans represent nearly 5% of the state’s population.

But the biggest disparity is among Hispanics, who represent 22% of the state’s citizens but only 9% of its judges. Still, thanks to a huge push to bring diversity to Colorado’s judicial system, more Black women have been appointed to the bench in the last two years than in the last 25 years.

“I think having a bench that reflects the community it serves breeds confidence in the decisions being made,” said Justice Monica Marquez, who in 2010 was the first Latina appointed to the Colorado Supreme Court. “I can tell you that speaking with applicants, speaking with law students and attorneys, it leads to people saying, ‘Maybe this could happen for me.'”

In a recent Zoom interview, Marquez said she will watch Jackson’s hearings with some sense of PTSD. “I know what it’s like to be a first. I have a lot of sympathy for the courage that Ketanji Brown Jackson needs to have right now. There will be a lot of laser-focused attention (on) every aspect of her life. It’s a very brave thing to undertake.”

“It’s about time!” said Senior Judge Gary Jackson. “She will bring a different perspective to the Court.”

Jackson, who is no relation to Ketanji Brown Jackson, has focused on the lack of diversity in Colorado’s judicial system his entire career.

“It is incomprehensible that there have only been two Black Court of Appeals judges in the history of Colorado,” said Jackson. Raymond Jones was Colorado’s first Black Court of Appeals judge and the second was Karen Ashby. Both are retired.

Jackson knows what it’s like to be a pioneer. In 1970, he became Colorado’s only Black deputy district attorney, when he was hired in the Denver office. In 2013, he was appointed to the Denver County Court. Last month, he was inducted into the Denver Public Library’s Blacks in Colorado Hall of Fame.

Jackson described a traumatizing moment that illustrated to him that Black people are not treated the same as white people. He was 7 years old and sitting in the back seat of the family car when his father was stopped, ordered out of the car and handcuffed for making a rolling stop in Cherry Creek, where they lived.

“It was frightening to see your dad forced up against the car like that,” Jackson said, adding that they were one of only a few Black families who lived in Cherry Creek at the time. 

If not for Jackson’s fight for inclusion, Colorado’s bench may not be as diverse as it has gotten in the last two and a half years. An effort he led to get people of color on the bench resulted in the Colorado legislature creating a position within the State Court Administrator’s Office in 2019 to provide outreach and education to people of color to encourage them to apply for judicial vacancies.

Since Sumi Lee stepped into that job, 35 new judges have been seated. Of those, five are Black, four are Hispanic, two are multiracial and 24 are white; 51% are women. Three are openly LGBTQ including one on the Court of Appeals.

“We do what we can, which is to encourage and groom applicants to apply for the bench and provide outreach to tell them what the job is really like,” Lee said.

Lee has started several programs, including “Java with Judges,” a coffee house setting where diverse law students get a chance to connect with judges, and Dream Team 2.0, a one-on-one coaching program for diverse judicial applicants.

In Colorado’s rural areas, there are almost no judges of color, a problem Lee called the “legal desert.” The Colorado Bar Association and other legal organizations will sponsor a pilot program this summer that places law students of color into two rural communities, providing them with housing and contacts for six weeks.

“We want to break the stereotypes about what working in a rural community is like. It’s more robust and fulfilling than students realize,” said Lee.

Neither Marquez nor Lee have influence when it comes to judicial selections. That part is handled by judicial nominating committees that are dotted across the state. Volunteer lawyer and citizen volunteers in each district make nominations that are sent to the governor, who makes the final appointments.

“This governor has shown that he is very interested in making those kinds of selections,” Lee said of Gov. Jared Polis.

Though Lee is chipping away at getting qualified diverse candidates interested in judgeships, she understands that there are what she calls “leaks” in the pipeline. Youngsters of color who may be interested in a legal career today won’t show up in the demographics for years to come. Many are in high school, college or law school, and in most cases, attorneys must have five years of experience before they are considered for a judicial appointment.  

“We need to more than double the number of Hispanic and Latino judges on the bench today in order to keep up with the growing communities of color,” said Marquez. “The largest group of diversity is under the age of 18. That’s where the potential is.”

Marquez’s role models were at the dinner table every night. Her father Lorenzo was the first Latino appointed to the Colorado Court of Appeals, where he served for 20 years before retiring. Her mother was a school teacher.

“I swore to them both as a kid that the two things I’d never do was to become a school teacher and a lawyer. And that’s exactly what I did. I did both.”