Oakland man up for high court
If appointed, court would have first openly gay justice
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday introduced Oakland resident Justice Martin Jenkins as his nominee to become the California Supreme Court’s first openly gay justice, calling him a champion of equality across racial and gender divides.
If appointed, Jenkins also would be the third Black man ever to serve on the state’s highest court.
“Martin Jenkins is both a product and a protector of the California dream,” Newsom said during a news briefing on Monday, adding that Jenkins has “spent a lifetime overcoming odds, breaking down barriers and blazing new trails.”
“As a lawyer and a judge, he’s built an irreproachable reputation as a person of fortitude and fairness, a man of inner strength, grace and compassion who knows that despite what the Declaration says — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not simply inalienable,” the governor added. “They must be relentlessly protected and defended.”
Jen k i n s wou ld fill the vacancy created by California Supreme Court Justice Ming W. Chin — the first Chinese American justice on the court and its 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.
During Monday’s briefing, Jenkins thanked Newsom for “seeing him” for who he is as an openly gay Black man and promised to do his best to “dispatch the enormous responsibilities that encompass this great office.”
“I’m not here in spite of the struggle, I am here because of the struggle,” Jenkins said. “It is deep in my character, has afforded me sensibilities of the world and about people who are not so willing to accept that people can love differently than they do but nevertheless love sincerely, genuinely and effectively.”
Jenkins, 66, of Oakland, 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 graduated from Santa Clara University in
1977 and played a brief stint in the NFL with the Seattle Seahawks, before deciding that he wanted to pursue a career in law.
He earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of San Francisco School of Law and started his 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.
Then-President Bill Clinton nominated him in 1997 to serve on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, and later former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger nominated him to to serve on California’s
First District Court of Appeals. He was appointed each time.
He came out of retirement to serve as Newsom’s judicial appointments secretary, where he 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.
Saundra Brown Armstrong, senior judge of the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, called Jenkins “a courageous jurist who is not haunted or immobilized by the fear of being wrong, nor is he struck with a sense of his own immutable correctness.”
“With each of his successes, he has worked to create in his wake an easier path forward for others,” Armstrong said in a
statement. “… Importantly, Justice Jenkins never loses sight of the fact that, behind every case file, stand people who will be impacted by his decision.”
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,” Chavez 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.”
Jenkins’ nomination will be submitted to the State Bar’s Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation and must be confirmed by the Commission on Judicial Appointments. The annual compensation for the position is $261,949.