Federal appeals court justices overwhelmingly represent the wealthy and powerful interests, a liberal advocacy group maintains.
“We have created a justice system where working people are far more likely to sit before a judge with experience union-busting or block-ing consumer protections than someone with experience representing people like them,” said Alliance for Justice President Rakim H. D. Brooks.
The group reported that fewer than 6% of all federally appointed appellate court judges ever represented laborers, consumers, or low-income people before becoming judges.
The group’s report also concluded that recent decisions in federal courts display bias in favor of “the wealthy and powerful against the interest of working people and communities.”
The report revealed that 68% of federally appointed appellate judges are former corporate attorneys and 28% are ex-prosecutors, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Aug. 4.
Alliance for Justice noted that just two of the 11 appellate judges had worked in labor law, consumer protection or legal aid before joining the judiciary.
One of these two was Judge Jennifer Sunghas, who had prior experience as a union organizer and worked on civil rights cases for two years before she practiced labor law in San Francisco.
Johnnie Rawlinson, another judge with similar knowledge, spent a year representing low-income clients at Nevada Legal Services before becoming a Nevada prosecutor for 18 years.
The report credited the Biden administration for its advancement of gender and racial diversity in its judicial appointments so far. Of Pres-ident Joe Biden’s 65 Senate-confirmed judges as of June 1, 49 were women while 37 were people of color.
It also noted a few appointments of former public defenders to the courts — the most influential being Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who became the high court’s first member who has worked as a public defender.
