Why We Should Care About Diversity on the Bench

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My Brennan Center colleagues Jamie Muth and Chihiro Isozaki recently released a new analysis describing racial, ethnic, gender, and professional diversity in state supreme courts across the country. The numbers reveal a stark disconnect between the composition of many of these powerful bodies and the communities they serve.

In 18 states, high courts don’t have a single justice of color, including in 12 states where people of color make up at least 20 percent of the population. There are no women judges on the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals and no women of color on state supreme court benches in 25 states. Eight states have only one female justice. 

The report also describes disparities in professional backgrounds. For example, while 39 percent of sitting justices are former prosecutors, only 10 percent are former public defenders. 

There are many reasons to care about diversity on the bench, from fostering public trust in the courts to providing role models. But having a broad set of life experiences reflected on the bench can also help judges do a better job of getting things right.

An example that has always stuck with me comes from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008–09 term, when there was only a single female justice among its members: Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That year, the Court heard a case involving a 13-year-old girl who was strip-searched by female school administrators. The girl was forced to strip to her underpants, shake her bra, and pull aside her panties — all based on an accusation by another student that the girl had provided her with prescription-strength ibuprofen.

The oral argument in Safford Unified School District v. Redding didn’t seem to go well for the girl — several justices laughed about locker room antics, and Justice Stephen Breyer expressed skepticism about the harm, asking, “Why is this a major thing to say strip down to your underclothes?” 

After the argument, Ginsburg spoke to Supreme Court reporter Joan Biskupic about the case — and the other justices. “They have never been a 13-year-old girl,” Ginsburg said in the interview. “It’s a very sensitive age for a girl. I don’t think that my colleagues, some of them, quite understood.”

We don’t know exactly what happened behind closed doors, but it seems clear that Ginsburg’s voice made a difference. The Court ultimately agreed that the girl’s rights had been violated; only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented. Ginsburg and Justice John Paul Stevens would have gone farther to rule that the right at issue was clearly established and that the school officials should not be subject to qualified immunity. 

As someone who was also once a 13-year-old girl, I appreciated the Court’s ultimate recognition that the girl had experienced the search as “embarrassing, frightening, and humiliating.” It mattered that Ginsburg had a seat at the table.

Washington Supreme Court Chief Justice Steven C. González made a similar observation about his own court in an interview with State Court Report in 2023. “It’s important to have people making decisions who have a variety of experiences, who may have lived in poverty themselves, who may have experienced life as a person of color or as a gay person and understand what that is like,” he explained. 

Among other things, González argued that having these perspectives helps all of the justices on the court. “The majority voice changes when I’m in the room as well,” he observed, referencing his background as a Latino man. “It changes the very nature of the discussion. I’m a big fan of that inclusiveness, and I think it makes us better overall.”

I’ll conclude by acknowledging the elephant in the room: The Trump administration has made efforts to dismantle DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) one of its signature initiatives, thereby jeopardizing many of the programs that have helped build more diverse benches over time. Isozaki and Muth discuss this trend in a companion piece in State Court Report, arguing that the administration is wrong on both the law and the policy. But they also point out that many stakeholders both inside and outside the courts continue to work toward building a more inclusive judicial system. “In other words,” they argue, “the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion are here to stay.”

Alicia Bannon is editor in chief for State Court Report. She is also director of the Judiciary Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Suggested Citation: Alicia Bannon, Diversity on the Bench, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ(Dec. 11, 2025), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/diversity-bench