Praeger for Place 6
Houston lawyer Kathy Cheng sees her race for Place 6 on the Texas Supreme Court as a prime opportunity for voters to break up what many see as a monoculture among the nine justices sitting on the state’s top civil court. There are six men and three women. Of them, only one justice — Eva Guzman — is Hispanic. There are no African Americans, no Asian Americans and no Democrats, either.
Cheng says her experience as an immigrant, a woman and a person of color equips her to see the world — and where the law fits into it — with more nuance and depth than her opponent, in part because he is white.
“If you don’t experience, say, racism in your own life, then you won’t have as deep, or as broad, an understanding of what that experience is like or what it means,” she said, describing the extra awareness she believes she’d bring to her role on the bench.
We agree with Cheng that this court could use a greater dose of diversity — and not just along racial lines. More variety in life experience, in legal practice and, yes, political ideology would be welcome. After all, how can judges apply the law to the facts of daily life in legal disputes without ready antennae capable of reading life in all its variegated nuance?
Cheng goes too far, however, to suggest that a vote for her opponent, Larry Praeger of Dallas, would be a missed opportunity to bring diversity of any kind to the court. Praeger, a former prosecutor who has built up his own mostly family law practice over 20 years, would also bring a radically different perspective to the court.
A Democrat who nonetheless works easily with Republicans, Praeger says Republicans’ stranglehold on the top court has squeezed out the perspective of ordinary men and women who find themselves outmatched by powerful corporations and others with easy access to top-drawer legal talent and political support.
He also brings something that Cheng can’t: substantial experience as an appellate attorney. Praeger has argued one case before the Texas Supreme Court and been lead attorney on many others before intermediate appeals courts. By contrast, Cheng says she’s never practiced before the court she’d like to join and never served as a first chair or lead attorney before an intermediate court of appeals.
Praeger is board certified in family law and a former member of the grievance committee of the State Bar of Texas.
That experience will serve him well in the fall, should he win the primary and in November face formidable incumbent Justice Jane Bland, who was appointed to the court last year. And it would serve him well on the high court, should he ultimately win the bench. Voters would be wise to vote for him March 3.