Training programs and initiatives have been created to address gender identity issues in the judiciary

I very much appreciated the concerns raised in the article “Misgendering still happening in California courts,” April 5, 2024. And I noted with interest Chan Tov McNamarah’s observation “that it was a problem in the judiciary as well.” While efforts at the judicial branch to self-educate on this subject have suffered a couple of missteps over the years, in general the judiciary has instituted and supported many robust educational programs with a focus on finding ways to ensure that people who identify as trans are treated with dignity and respect by all court participants.

In 2010 California’s Judicial Council’s Access and Fairness Advisory Committee (now the Advisory Committee on Providing Access and Fairness, PAF), on the suggestion of the Krieger Sexual Orientation Fairness Subcommittee (KSOF), named after the late Judge Jerry Krieger when it was created in 1993, recommended that the Judicial Council adopt a Rule of Court and a related court form allowing litigants to be able to designate their gender for court proceedings. The proposed rule would have granted bench officers discretion to deny the request if gender or sex was an issue in the case. At the time, the RuPro Committee was reticent to adopt any new rules, so the proposed rule died. Judges Erica Yew and Julie Emede in Santa Clara County have created forms for litigants in their courtrooms to inform the court of their pronouns and preferred names. Now would be the perfect time for the state judicial branch to reconsider the previous proposal.

The state judicial branch also convened a Gender Expression/Identity Joint Ad Hoc Working Group. In 2018 the Working Group recommended that when any new, or existing rules and forms are reviewed, they should be updated to ensure gender-neutral language. Over the years, the state judicial branch’s education arm, the Center for Judicial Education and Research (CJER), has produced many broadcasts and programs around LGBTQ+ issues, beginning with the sexual orientation trainings created by San Francisco Judge Donna Hitchens (ret.) in the 1990s, and moving into gender-identity issues as they took center stage, even including the topic in many of the required trainings on judicial ethics.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court’s Access and Fairness Committee first created a training for judicial officers on trans issues in 2012, entitled “What Is Your Transgender IQ?,” and as recently as January 2023 produced a webinar entitled, “What Are Your Pronouns, and Why Does It Matter?” In Los Angeles, two of our Presiding Judges have shown a strong commitment to LGBTQ+ and particularly trans issues. In 2017, Presiding Judge Dan Buckley mandated that all judicial officers handling name and gender changes for children and adults attend training on those issues. Those training sessions (presented with Judge Robert Harrison) were so well received that Judge Buckley then asked that training be offered throughout the county. In 2018, Judge Amy Pellman and I created a program that was offered at 12 court locations and reached over 220 judicial officers; each session was taught by one judicial officer from the site alongside one judicial officer from the LGBTQ+ community.

That program and a 2019 CJER video each raised the issue of how to ensure litigants and attorneys would be comfortable to inform the court how they would like to be addressed. In the video, I mentioned that I had been thinking about adding my pronouns (at the time he/him) to my nameplate on the bench as a way to invite others to tell me theirs. I subsequently was asked to write an article on the subject for the monthly newsletter of the International Association of LGBTQ+ Judges. Today numerous judges across the country and in Canada display their pronouns on their nameplates; Judge Linda Colfax in San Francisco most likely being the first in California. Sadly, my own request to do so in Los Angeles was initially denied in January, 2020. I am happy to report that within a couple of months of Presiding Judge Samantha Jessner taking office, she informed judicial officers that we are free to have our pronouns on our nameplates, business cards, or other forms of identification.

While instances of misgendering persist today, many people in the court system are committed to remedying the situation. The more comfortable we can make court participants feel in being able to state how they would like to be addressed, the more the bench will be able to uphold its duty to ensure that attorneys, litigants, and court staff are treating each other without bias.