Colorado’s first Latina chief justice and other prominent Hispanic attorneys gathered in the Colorado Supreme Court’s courtroom on Thursday for a discussion about heritage, mentorship and lagging representation in the legal profession.

“Have you ever felt pressure to conform,” asked Chief Justice Monica M. Márquez, “or, to be super blunt, to ‘tone down the brown?'”

“I think about how we have to code switch and a lot of times we have to do that so other people can be comfortable. And I’m getting real tired of that. It’s exhausting. So, I’m like no, this is who I am,” responded Adams County Court Judge Mariana Vielma.

“I love being in a county courtroom,” she added, “because that is the one place in the world where I get to be all of me.”

The event, organized during National Hispanic Heritage Month, featured introductory remarks from Chief Judge Gilbert M. Román, the first Latino to head the Court of Appeals, and appellate Judge Christina F. Gomez.

Approximately 6% of lawyers in Colorado are Hispanic or Latino, compared to 1-in-5 of the overall population. As of mid-2022, the judicial branch reported the percentage of Hispanic judges was less than half of the proportion of Colorado’s Hispanic population — and a lower rate of representation than American Indian or Asian judges.

Márquez, who has been on the Supreme Court since 2010 and became chief justice this summer, attributed the success of many current Hispanic judges to their former boss, then-Attorney General Ken Salazar, the first Latino elected statewide in Colorado. She name-checked Court of Appeals Judges Terry Fox and Anthony J. Navarro, as well as U.S. District Court Senior Judge Christine M. Arguello.

“All of those careers got catapulted at the attorney general’s office because the attorney general was thoughtful in making sure those high-profile cases were handed out to different folks in the office and gave us an opportunity to really shine,” Márquez said. “You can really move someone’s career along by just giving somebody a chance.”

Justice Carlos A. Samour Jr., who came to Colorado in 1979 with his 11 siblings and parents, recalled being in “culture shock” when his family fled El Salvador.

“Going to school, I remember everyone looked different. I went to Columbine High School and 99.9% of the students there — this is 1979 — were White,” he said.

Samour described feelings of not fitting in in college and in his early law career. He recalled people at his law firm would mix up him and the only other Latino associate — to the point where the two men would call each other the wrong name on purpose in jest.

“The Latino community helped me get here and now it’s on me to pass it on and to help others,” Samour said. “Also, to make sure that we look good as representatives of the Latino community, that we represent well. Because you know there are people out there that, if we fail, they go, ‘You see? They failed. We should have never put them in that position. Let’s not do that again.'”

Vielma, the county court judge, acknowledged a pressure to conform in the legal profession and “navigating two different worlds.” She said she occasionally greets litigants in Spanish and lets them know an interpreter will be assisting them.

“If someone says I’m favoring that person, I say, well, everybody else who speaks English, I greet them in English. I don’t greet them in Spanish. Am I favoring them? No, I’m looking at them as a human being.”

Amber Gonzales, the past president of the Colorado Hispanic Bar Association, said that while Hispanic law students are enrolling at rates close to the overall population, there remains a disconnect with their numbers in private law partnerships and in the judiciary.

“There’s clearly something happening between the time you start law school and the time you’re a rainmaker,” she said. “And that something is the system that’s beating us down, the doors that are closing.”

Márquez asked the panelists what gave them hope, to which Samour responded that she gave him hope.

“The fact that we’re judicial officers,” he said, “that gives me hope. For me, that’s the hope that we can continue to increase that, hopefully exponentially, and get it to a point where it reflects the community.”

“If anyone tells you to ‘tone down the brown’,” added Vielma, “that’s your clue to bring it up three notches.”