Washington Courts: Press Release Detail

Racial Justice Consortium Launched in Response to Supreme Court Letter

OLYMPIA – A Racial Justice Consortium has been established by the Washington judicial branch with a year-long mission to identify actions and structural changes that could help end racism and the devaluing of Black lives within the state judicial system. Consortium members held an inaugural meeting on March 26, 2021.

The Consortium came about in response to an Open Letter issued to the state legal community by the Washington Supreme Court on June 4, 2020, challenging members to look honestly at racial inequality within the justice system, and for all members to take active steps to end it.

“We continue to see racialized policing and the overrepresentation of Black Americans in every stage of our criminal and juvenile justice systems. Our institutions remain affected by the vestiges of slavery: Jim Crow laws that were never dismantled and racist court decisions that were never disavowed,” said the letter signed by all nine justices of the Court. “The legal community must recognize that we all bear responsibility for this on-going injustice, and that we are capable of taking steps to address it, if only we have the courage and the will.”

The full text of the Open Letter can be found here:  http://www.courts.wa.gov/content/publicUpload/Supreme%20Court%20News/Judiciary%20Legal%20Community%20SIGNED%20060420.pdf 

The public letter followed a string of high-profile confrontations and deaths nationally of Black men and women involving members of law enforcement, which brought public attention to other high-profile conflicts and fatalities as well as ongoing research findings on inequality in the justice system.

“The whole system of justice was being questioned,” said Washington Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu, who serves as co-chair of the state Minority and Justice Commission, of the decision by the Court to issue the letter.

Following the letter, members of state judge associations came forward with ideas for action, but there needed to be some way for these members and ideas to be supported and coordinated in order to have an impact. “Our thought was to provide a space for those of us in the judicial branch to look at ourselves; to look inward and find ways to transform ourselves, our practices, and our policies,” Justice Yu said.

A decision was made to create a consortium of representatives from each judicial branch entity, from judges of all levels of court, clerks, court administrators, and community members directly impacted by the justice system. The Racial Justice Consortium will explore and support new ideas for education, training and identifying specific areas of change, but with a limited timeframe such as with a task force. Donations to support the effort were made by former Washington Supreme Court Justice Bobbe Bridge and her husband Jon, all judicial branch entities, various law firms, the Raikes Foundation, and Microsoft Corporation.

“Consortium members have the unique opportunity to define their collective racial justice vision, co-create guiding principles and develop an achievable action plan -- every step intended to advance racial justice,” said Patricia Lally, who will serve as staff to the Consortium. Lally is the former director of the City of Seattle's Office for Civil Rights and is the founder of Racial Equity Works, which provides training on racial equity. “If we want a different outcome, we will have to work differently. There are no easy answers,” she said.

At the Consortium’s first meeting, a number of members said that addressing racism within the judicial system honestly will be difficult and uncomfortable, but that honesty is critical in order to identify the kinds of changes needed.

Washington Supreme Court Chief Justice Steven González spoke to Consortium members, saying that it is important to focus on creating change. “We need to bring meaning and weight to the term ‘justice for all’ and we need to give people hope,” he said.

CONTACT: Patricia Lally, Racial Equity Practitioner and Coordinator of the Racial Justice Consortium, Patricia.Lally@courts.wa.gov; Cynthia Delostrinos, Administrative Manager for the Supreme Court Commissions, Cynthia.Delostrinos@courts.wa.gov; Lorrie Thompson, senior communications officer, Lorrie.Thompson@courts.wa.gov, (360) 705-5347.