WASHINGTON, March 15, 2021 – Seven female judges and former judges who broke barriers in the legal profession will discuss the obstacles they overcame in a program Friday, March 26, hosted by the American Bar Association Judicial Division.
The six judges will be featured in a free program titled “Judicial Milestones in the Quest for Women’s Equality.” They will discuss challenges that women encounter on the bench, their personal achievements and endeavors, and advances for women in the judiciary. The discussion is part of a series of ABA programs in celebration of Women's History Month.
The program is co-sponsored by the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession, the ABA Standing Committee on Public Education and the ABA Division for Public Education.
Judges featured in the program will be:
- Paulette Brown, former president of the ABA and the National Bar Association. Brown was the first Black woman and the first woman of color to lead the ABA. She is a former Municipal Court judge in Plainfield, NJ.
- Chief Judge Bernadette D’Souza of the Orleans Parish Civil District Court in New Orleans. D’Souza is president of the National Association of Women Judges and was the first Family Court judge of the Civil Court.
- Justice Eva M. Guzman of the Texas Supreme Court. Guzman was the first Hispanic woman to serve on the court.
- Chief Judge Barbara M. Lynn of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Lynn is former chair of the ABA Judicial Division and was the first female chief judge in Texas.
- Judge Jacqueline Nguyen of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. A native of Vietnam, Nguyen is the first Asian American woman to serve on a federal appeals court.
- Tara Osborn, a retired Army colonel and former chief trial judge of the U.S. Army. Osborn was the first officer of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps in Iraq.
- Patricia Ann Timmons-Goodson, former justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. Timmons-Goodson was the first Black woman to serve on the court.
The program, which starts at 11 a.m. CT, will be moderated by Ernestine Gray, former judge of the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court in New Orleans.
Reporters who would like to cover the program should contact Marc Davis at marc.davis@americanbar.org. Others can register online here.
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