Minority Lawyers Assail Court Picks

Black, Latino and Asian lawyer groups protesting the lack of minority finalists for two vacant federal magistrate slots met Friday with the chief federal judge in San Diego and were told that the selection process will not be changed.

Chief U.S. District Judge Judith N. Keep said she told the lawyers that the two positions will be filled from the nine white finalists chosen from an original pool of 62 applicants. Five minority lawyers failed to make the cut.

Keep said she believes a committee of area lawyers acted fairly when they chose the nine finalists last month. She also said that, even if the court’s judges wanted to bring in minority candidates, they could not because the selection process is guided by federal rules, not by local judges.

The protesting minority lawyers said after the 90-minute, closed-door meeting that they understood Keep’s position but were disappointed.

“She definitely recognizes that we have a valid point,” said Randy Jones, a federal prosecutor and president of the Earl B. Gilliam Bar Assn., a black lawyers group. Keep, the only woman on the San Diego federal bench, has often said that her own appointment 11 years ago was based in part on her sex.

“But, by the rules and regulations that they operate under, according to her, their hands are tied, as she put it,” Jones said. “We always feel, as we said, that the chief judge can do what she wants to, that judges can do what they want to, that their hands are never tied. But she says there is nothing they can do.”

It was unclear after the meeting whether the minority lawyers would press their protest.

“You want your day in court,” Jones said. “We had our day in court. The issue now is whether we want to appeal. Right now we want to see.”

Federal magistrates, who are appointed by District Court judges, serve an eight-year term. The job typically involves setting bail in criminal cases, trying minor criminal cases and settling civil disputes. It pays $118,000 a year.

The two vacancies arose earlier this year when former Magistrate Irma Gonzalez left to become a Superior Court judge and when a new magistrate post was created.

Applicants for magistrate vacancies are first screened by a committee of local lawyers appointed by the federal judges in that district, according to the rules set up by the governing agency of the federal courts, the U.S. Judicial Conference. The District Court judges choose from finalists recommended by the committee, Keep said.

District Court is the formal name for the federal trial courts.

Judges can call for more candidates only if they consider the panelists unqualified, Keep said. She said that does not appear to be likely.

“We do have tremendous confidence in the committee,” Keep said. “We are sure they were thorough and fair, and were sensitive to the issue of minorities.”

The entire selection process operates in secret, Keep said. She said she could not divulge the names of the nine finalists or explain why the five minority lawyers did not make the cut.

Minority lawyers have said that the five were black or Latino. None were Asian, the lawyers said.

Besides Jones, other lawyers who spearheaded the protest that led to the meeting with Keep were Manuel Ramirez, president of the Latino attorney group San Diego La Raza Lawyers Assn., and Sally Lorang, head of the Pan-Asian Lawyers of San Diego.

Neither Ramirez nor Lorang could be reached Friday for comment.