a lack of apa diversity in u.s. district court

This is a great opinion piece by Celia W. Lee and Ken Kawaichi in the San Francisco Chronicle on the surprising and severe lack of Asian Pacific American diversity in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, considering the Bay Area's unique history of significant legal cases involving Asian Pacific Americans: An indefensible lack of diversity on the U.S. District Court.

In Northern California's state courts, there are 27 Superior Court judges, two commissioners, a justice on the Court of Appeal and two justices on the Supreme Court... but no APA judges on the federal bench.

And even with that significant number in the state courts, it still hasn't achieved parity with the APA population, which makes up 33 percent of San Francisco's population and about 20 percent of the Bay Area population.

So what's up with that? As the piece points out, the remedy is obvious: appoint a qualified Asian Pacific American judge to the U.S. District Court in the Northern District. After all, this is the district that saw Yick Wo vs. Hopkins, Wong Kim Ark vs. the United States, Korematsu vs. United States, and Lau vs. Nichols.

Also, the piece urges the appointment of an APA judge to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, the federal appellate court for California. No active Asian American judge sits on the Ninth Circuit. In fact, there are no active Asian American judges in any Circuit Courts of Appeals in the United States.