On Oct. 17, the New York Law Journal ran a front-page headline entitled, “High Court Removes Two Judges,” accompanied by two adjoining but separate lengthy articles detailing the reasons for each judge's removal.  The second article was accompanied by a photograph of the judge removed, a female judge of color.

The Judicial Friends Association and the Latino Judges Association write jointly to express our deep concern regarding the implicit bias reflected by the New York Law Journal.  To the extent you decided to publish any photographs, we wonder why you chose to publish solely the photograph of the female judge of color.

Implicit bias “refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner … The implicit associations we harbor in our subconscious cause us to have feelings and attitudes about other people based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity, age, and appearance.  These associations develop over the course of a lifetime beginning at a very early age through exposure to direct and indirect messages.  In addition to early life experiences, the media and news programming are often-cited origins of implicit associations” (Mirna Martinez Santiago, Esq., “Implicit Bias Reference List”).

As the Supreme Court recently recognized, “[i]t must become the heritage of our Nation to rise above racial classifications that are so inconsistent with our commitment to the equal dignity of all persons. *** This Court's decisions demonstrate that racial bias implicates unique historical, constitutional, and institutional concerns.  An effort to address the most grave and serious statements of racial bias is … to ensure that our legal system remains capable of coming ever closer to the promise of equal treatment under the law that is so central to a functioning democracy” (Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, 137 S.Ct. 855, 867-68 [2017]).

We hope that this is taken as an opportunity to raise awareness on the issue going forward, including with respect to decisions on the posting of photographs.

Editor's response: The New York Law Journal made repeated attempts to secure a photo of the other judge but was unsuccessful.