First openly gay person to serve on state’s Supreme Court

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Bay Area-native Justice Martin Jenkins as his nominee to the California Supreme Court on Monday, calling him a champion of equality across both racial and gender lines.

If appointed, Jenkins would become the first openly gay person to serve on the state’s highest court and only the third Black person to have the honor.

“I am truly humbled and honored to be asked by the governor to continue serving the people of California on the Supreme Court,” Jenkins said in a statement. “If confirmed, I will serve with the highest ethical standards that have guided me throughout my career, informed by the law and what I understand to be fair and just.”

Jenkins would fill a vacancy created by California Supreme Court Justice Ming W. Chin — the state’s first Chinese American justice and the court’s most conservative member — who retired on Aug. 28 at

the age of 78. As a Democrat, Jenkins would bolster the Democratic majority on the state’s seven-member Supreme Court.

The 66-year- old justice was born in San Francisco and grew up cleaning office buildings and churches with his father who worked as a clerk and janitor for the city and county of San Francisco. He earned a Juris Doc

tor degree from the University of San Francisco School of Law and started his law career as a prosecutor for the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.

Throughout his career, Jenkins has served a wide variety of roles in the state’s judicial system — from litigating civil rights cases for the U.S. Department of Justice to serving as a judge on the Alameda County Superior Court and the Oakland Municipal Court to most recently becoming Newsom’s Judicial Appointments Secretary.

Then-President Bill Clinton nominated him in 1997 to serve on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California and later on, he was nominated by former California Arnold Schwarzenegger and appointed to serve on California’s First District Court of Appeals.

In his role as judicial appointments secretary, Jenkins has appointed 45 jurists with the goal of helping to promote diversity and build a judiciary that reflects the populations in those communities and played an integral role in promoting transparency so that for the first time in state history, the individuals who provide feedback on judicial candidates for nomination and appointment will be known to the public.

In a statement Monday, Newsom called Jenkins a “decent man to the core” who is “widely respected among lawyers and jurists, active in his Oakland community and his faith.”

“As a critical member of my senior leadership team, I’ve seen firsthand that Justice Jenkins possesses brilliance and humility in equal measure,” the governor said in a statement. “The people of California could not ask for a better jurist or kinder person to take on this important responsibility.”

Equality California Executive Director Rick Chavez Zbur called Newsom’s appointment of the state’s first openly gay supreme court justice “a monumental step forward for the LGBTQ+ community and for our entire state.”

“Not only is Justice Jenkins exceptionally qualified and an outstanding choice for California’s highest court, but he embodies the values of our great state,” Chaves Zbur said. “Governor Newsom is setting a national example as he works to ensure California’s government reflects the diversity of the people they serve.”