Judicial Council meeting on judicial bias disappoints attorneys

For attorneys hoping to improve how the California courts deal with judicial bias, the first public meeting a Judicial Council work group held last week was largely a letdown.

These attorneys say the public meeting failed to give those listening in a substantive update on the findings and accomplishments of the work group, which has held five closed meetings since December and did not allow members of the public to speak at the public meeting. Presenters at the meeting also did not address the public comments it solicited and received in January and February, attorneys said.

The first half of the two-hour meeting featured presentations by judges, court executive officers, and Commission on Judicial Performance Director Chief Counsel Gregory Dresser on existing complaint procedures for attorneys.

"I think that the whole presentation was misrepresented," said Leslie Levy, who represents workers as a founding partner at Levy Vinick Burrell Hyams LLP. "Everybody I know who listened to it did not expect nor was listening for the purpose of getting a rundown of what the current process is."

"What we wanted to hear was what kind of things they're looking at in terms of change and the interactions between the state and the local committees," Levy added. "We were being talked to. We were not being talked with."

Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye launched the Work Group to Enhance Administrative Standards Addressing Bias in Court Proceedings in November, with the goal of updating Standard of Judicial Administration 10.20 to reflect current law. The standard, which was last updated in the 1990s, recommends a series of actions courts can take to prevent bias, including establishing local bias committees that have informal procedures for handling complaints.

A survey by the Daily Journal last summer found that few superior courts in California had local bias committees, but a number of county courts have since launched their own.

Copies of the public comments obtained by the Daily Journal reveal allegations of judges discriminating against attorneys based on their religion and gender; concerns about how indigenous parties are treated in the court system; and recommendations that the work group use data collection to track the efficacy of implicit bias training, require diverse memberships in local bias committees, maintain data about informal complaints, and allow the State Bar to audit local data about these complaints.

The comments were submitted by attorneys, tribal judges, and the Children's Law Center of California.

Blaine Corren, a spokesperson for the Judicial Council, was not able to say by press time why last week's public meeting did not address the public comments.

But Corren said last week work group members met with interested groups - including members of attorney organizations - to discuss their concerns and receive feedback. The public comments submitted in January and February "have been used to help shape the group's work to date and proposals that will go out for public comment," he said.

Beth W. Mora, who is co-chair of the California Employment Lawyers Association's Committee on Bias in the Judiciary, said in an interview last week she has asked the Judicial Council work group multiple times to hold public meetings and to see the agendas for its closed meetings.

"We specifically asked for attorney voices to be involved, and we were specifically told the agenda [for the public meeting] was going to stay as is," Mora said, adding she was told she would be able to provide feedback via the public comment process.

Wendy Musell, who is of counsel at Levy Vinick and was part of Mora's email correspondence with the work group, said she hoped employment attorneys in particular could work more closely with the group to develop standards for informal complaint procedures.

"Folks who have been doing employment, civil rights work - there are certain minimum standards such as maintaining records, ensuring non-retaliation policies that actually have a chance of working," she said.

"The majority of the two-hour meeting was really talking about the status quo and ... [Standard] 10.20 was supposed to address the status quo and address the shortfalls that presently exist regarding bias in the judiciary," Musell said. "What I heard was more of the same."