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A Black Woman on the Supreme Court will make our democracy stronger
Chris Punongbayan is a lawyer and Executive Director of ChangeLawyers.
“I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust…We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.”
-Thurgood Marshall, first Black Supreme Court Justice appointed in 1967
For the first time since 1789 when the United States Supreme Court was created, a Black woman may become a Justice of the Court. It’s painful — but not surprising — to fathom that after 233 years and 115 Justices, there has never been a Black Woman Justice.
And this profound lack of representation is not just a Supreme Court problem. According to the Pew Research Center, there have only ever been 70 Black women who have served as a federal judge. That’s 1.8% of the 3,843 federal judges ever.
