Jack Ruffin’s mother never wanted him to be a lawyer. As a Black man in South Georgia, he once told an interviewer, it would only put a bigger target on his back.
But Ruffin pursued the career anyway, and built a record fighting school segregation and winning acquittals for wrongfully accused Black southerners. That record landed him in 1979 on a list of prospective nominees for a federal judgeship in Georgia.
Instead, the nomination went to a white lawyer and former federal bankruptcy judge with ties to then-Sen. Sam Nunn.
And 44 years later, the Southern District of Georgia still has never had a Black judge.
Of the 94 federal district courts, 25 have never had a non-white judge, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis of federal court records. It’s not just an issue in the South: Fifteen states from the Northeast to the upper Great Plains have courts on the list.
Nowhere is the disparity more jarring than in Georgia’s Southern District, a venue that includes the cities of Savannah and Augusta and 43 counties that line the coast and pack the state’s southeastern corner. Nearly one-third of the district’s residents are Black, making it the most diverse of any judicial district that has only ever had white judges.
There aren’t any formal requirements to be considered for a federal judgeship; many trial court judges come from major law firms, U.S. attorney’s offices, or were already judges in other courts before accepting the lifetime appointment. African Americans have historically been underrepresented in those jobs in coastal southern Georgia.
The backstory to that court’s all-white track record is also, like most, about timing and opportunity: A Democratic president hasn’t had a chance to fill a vacancy there in almost 30 years, and only 16 judges have ever occupied one of the bench’s three full-time seats.
Diversifying…
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