The Judicial and Other Appointments Committee completes evaluations of candidates who request a review of their judicial fitness. It has been a busy year for this Committee! The WLS Board evaluated the following candidates:
 

• Judge Shama Hakim Mesiwala for the Third District Court of Appeal
• Judge Lauri Damrell for the United States District Court, Eastern District and the Third District Court of Appeal
• Clara Levers for the Superior Courts of Sacramento and Yolo Counties
• Kelly Babineau for the Superior Courts of Sacramento and Nevada Counties
• Commissioner Myrlys Stockdale Coleman for the Superior Court of Sacramento County

 
WLS consider the candidate’s professional and personal lives, achievements, involvement in women’s and minority issues, and a survey to make a recommendation. WLS ranked each of the candidates as exceptionally well qualified and submitted letters of support. 

We are in the midst of our 2023 WLS membership drive. If you sign up for membership for 2023 now, you will receive membership for the remainder of 2022 free. WLS membership entitles you to regular lectures and other programs featuring well-known speakers on a range of important topics, and you will be invited to our judicial and legislative receptions honoring judges and legislators who advocate for principles supported by WLS. We will also offer networking opportunities and provide space to participate in outreach with the community at large. 

This year, we added a “Retired Practitioner” rate ($45.00/year) for members that are no longer active in the practice law but who are still involved in the legal community. This idea was launched by community support, and we love the idea of expanding our retired practitioner membership base. 

We also offer a 25% discount on membership to members of our SCVA affiliated bar associations.
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To sign up for membership, please access https://www.womenlawyers-sacramento.org/join.html.

The Grants and Awards Committee has, thanks to another successful ArtFest, funded 14 nonprofits for a total of $15,000, and 5 scholarships for a total of $12,500.

We received a record number of grant applications this year: 42. That number is almost five times the applications we received last year, which underscores the large need which exists in our community. We are lucky to have such a wide variety of organizations which align with our goals of serving women, children, education, and the community:

• CASA Sacramento’s Making Memories Program, which provides funds to foster children for extracurricular activities to help them learn social skills, build confidence, and provide the relief of getting to be a young person among peers.
• Generation Great, a nonprofit tutoring organization for elementary school students at Title 1 Schools created and run by local high school students. Their mission is to help those students who need extra attention to time to work on basic academic skills. The program not only helps the younger students but enhances the skills of high school volunteers.  
• Single Mom Strong, a nonprofit with a mission to empower and create a community for single mothers and their children through enrichment, encouragement, and educational programs. Single Mom Strong focuses on addressing psychological needs through community, improving outcomes using practical tools, improving accessibility of preschool and childcare.  
• Sacramento Family Justice Center, which weaves together high quality, committed partners in a safe, collaborative center to provide integrated services to victims of domestic violence, human trafficking, sexual assault, dating violence, elder and child abuse.
• Sacramento Loaves & Fishes, whose mission is to sustain an environment of welcome, hospitality, safety, cleanliness, to all who seek survival services. They provide comprehensive services to adults and children living in extreme poverty or homelessness. 
• Food Literacy Center, whose mission to improve children’s knowledge, attitude, and behaviors toward healthy eating to create a lifetime of healthy habits and prevent diet related chronic health problems, by teaching students’ nutrition, gardening, and active play. 
• Wellspring Women’s Center, whose mission is to address needs of women and children experiencing challenges that stem from poverty. Core programs include: nutritious meals program, children’s corner, safety net services program, women’s wellness program, art of being program.
• Women’s Empowerment, which educates and empowers women experiencing homelessness with the skills and confidence necessary to secure a job, create a healthy lifestyle and regain a home for themselves and their children, including an 8-week employment readiness and empowerment program.  
• Folsom Cordova Community Partnership, which brings together resources and programming in a family resource center and job center to create a “one stop” experience for families. Focus on preventing child abuse through parent education, support, resources, free family activities as well as assisting youth and families in achieving self-sufficiency.  
• Sisters of Nia, Inc., whose mission is to empower socially and economically disadvantaged girls (grades 6-8) by providing cultural and educational programs designed to instill strong social skills, leadership development and academical excellence. 
• Fitrah, who targets children and young adults ages 16-25 that are aging out of foster care to act as a safety net, giving skills, improved self-esteem, and hope so that they can enter adulthood successfully.
• Child Abuse Prevention Council of Sacramento, whose mission is to prevent child abuse and neglect.
• Runnin’ for Rhett, whose mission is to help youth in the community learn to make healthy choices, including both nutrition and activity, runs Northern California’s largest FREE afterschool youth fitness program.
• El Hogar Community Services, Inc., who provides services that contribute to the mental health and emotional well-being of individuals and families in the community.

We received so many wonderful scholarship applications as well, from applicants attending McGeorge, UC Davis, Santa Clara, and Lincoln. These scholarship honor notable women of our profession including Frances Newell Carr, Margaret A. Flynn, Karen Pedersen Stevens, Virginia S. Mueller, and Grace Wiley. Applicants fall into categories such as:

• Advancing the position of women in law;
• Working to expand opportunities for historically disadvantaged persons;
• Those who have an interest in working in family law and/or starting their own family law practice;
• Have engaged in exemplary community service benefitting women and children, and/or
• Have overcome personal adversity.

These applicants are the future of our profession, women we hope join us in the practice of law and maybe even service on our board someday (names are withheld for privacy purposes).
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Looking forward, we will meet to discuss the Frances Newell Carr award. This prestigious award is given yearly to an outstanding lawyer, judge, or scholar in the Sacramento community in celebration of the awardee’s professional achievements, commitment to furthering legal opportunities for women in the law, and contribution to the lives of women and children in our community. 

Earlier this year, the Legislation and Bar Delegation Committee developed WLS’ policy agenda for the current legislative session. With the Board’s approval, the Committee’s focus is on removing barriers to health and success for women and children. To advance our agenda, we’ve supported legislation that aims to reduce economic abuse against foster youth and survivors of domestic violence. 

Following the US Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) 141 US 2619, particular attention has been paid to the protections of reproductive choice. 

Notably, WLS submitted letters of support for several bills, including Assembly Bill (AB) 2626 and Senate Bill (SB) 1142. AB 2626 prohibits specified licensing boards from suspending or revoking the certificate of a physician, nurse practitioner, certified nurse-midwife, or a physician assistant who performs an abortion in accordance with the provisions of their practice act and the Reproductive Privacy Act. SB 1142 requires the California Health and Human Services Agency (CHHSA) to establish a website and outreach campaign to increase awareness about, and access to, abortion.

WLS believes that legislative advocacy is an important tool to advance the organization’s mission. If you’d like to engage in advocacy, consider contacting your representatives in the California assembly and senate to express support for issues you care about. You can find your representatives here: https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov . 

Finally, consider voting yes on Proposition 1 on November 8th. Proposition 1, named the Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment, would amend the state constitution to prohibit the state from interfering with or denying an individual's reproductive freedom, which is defined to include a right to an abortion and a right to contraceptives.

WLS’ Legislation and Bar Delegation Committee is comprised of co-chairs Carmen-Nicole Cox and Natalie Smith.  

​As Women Lawyers of Sacramento approaches the end of Q2 this year, we reflect on our activity to date, and exciting upcoming events.
 
WLS 60th Anniversary Celebration
 
WLS celebrated its 60th Anniversary on May 19, 2022, hosting members of the bench, bar, and community at large at McGeorge School of Law for a dynamic and inspiring panel discussion featuring WLS Past Presidents Jerilyn Paik (1986), Windie Scott (1989), Karen Goodman (1999), and Sonia Fernandes (2017), moderated by WLS Judicial Liaison, the Hon. Elena J. Duarte. Thank you to our panelists, moderator, and generous sponsors and attendees for making this event an incredible success! Photos of the event can be found on the WLS Facebook Page.
 
June 22 – Pride Month MCLE with Justice Earl and Judge Mudryk
 
On June 22, 2022, WLS will celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride Month with the Hon. Laurie Earl and Hon. Andi Mudryk, joining in conversation about inclusion and equity, on the bench and in the law. Pride Month commemorates the Stonewall riots, which occurred at the end of June 1969. As a result, many Pride events are held during this month to recognize the impact LGBTQ+ people have had in the world. This virtual event will qualify for MCLE Elimination of Bias credit, and tickets are available now on Eventbrite.
 
September 29-October 1 – WLS ArtFest 2022 and Sip n’ See
 
Save the date for September 29-October 1, 2022, when the WLS Foundation will host its premier fundraising event, including exhibits by local artists and a very popular silent auction. The WLS Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, uses all proceeds from ArtFest for law school student scholarships and grants to local organizations serving the greater Sacramento area. WLS will gather for this year’s Sip n’ See at Track-7 Brewing in Curtis Park, providing an opportunity to preview some of the pieces before ArtFest, and otherwise enjoy some live music, craft beer and good food.
 
We hope to see you at our upcoming events, and looking forward to a wonderful rest of the year!

​On April 20, 2022, the Career Advancement and Retention Committee hosted its first event of the year  with guest speaker, Commissioner Myrlys Stockdale Coleman. The event was an intimate, honest conversation about career decisions and challenges, and turned into an impromptu discussion about the various paths to the bench. Special thanks to Commissioner Stockdale Coleman for her honesty and vulnerability in discussing her own path.
 
CAR is excitedly planning its next event. We are considering a panel discussion regarding the current legal market, how to leverage one’s position with a lateral placement in both the public and private sector, and how lateral / partner (both equity and non-equity) placements can be structured. 

Let us introduce ourselves as the two members of the 2022 Programs Committee: Jamie Powers and Susannah Martin. As many of you know, we started off the year with a unique and inspiring presentation by Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber. In a nod to Black History month, she spoke about both old and new challenges of access to voting in the Black community. She warned of further challenges to come and made a call for action on all our parts. We know many of our attendees felt invigorated by her talk and are excited to see how WLS can help shape that action.
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Our next presentation will be in June, Pride Month. In celebration of the LGBTQ community, we are honored to have Judge Laurie Earl and Judge Andi Mudryk speak with us. We are still working out the details but stay tuned for more information. If you have any input on this program or others to come, we would love to hear from you. We hope you enjoy the rest of our programs this year!

​Women Lawyers of Sacramento’s first program this year was held on February 24, 2022, jointly hosted with the Wiley W. Manuel Bar Association, and featured a conversation with California Secretary of State, Shirley N. Weber, Ph.D.  During the virtual event, Dr. Weber spoke about the significance of voting rights and importance of celebrating Black History. In the Q & A portion of the event, Dr. Weber urged local Bar Associations to be involved in educating the community about the importance of voting rights, and the need to protect the advances made through the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The following summary of the Voting Rights Act and U.S. Supreme Court decisions is offered in honor of Dr. Weber’s advice. Thank you Dr. Weber.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is considered to be the most effective piece of federal civil rights legislation ever written. Enacted with the intent of enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment, to prohibit racial discrimination in voting, and secure the right to vote for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South, it was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, in the presence of Martin Luther King, Jr. on August 6, 1965, during the height of the civil rights movement.

Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections and the US Supreme Court has acted three times within the last ten years to curb them.

The act contains numerous provisions that regulate elections. The act’s “general provisions” provide nationwide protections for voting rights. Section 2 is a general provision that prohibits state and local government from imposing any voting rule that “results in the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race or color” or membership in a language minority group. Other general provisions specifically outlaw literacy tests and similar devices that were historically used to disenfranchise racial minorities.

The act also contains “special provisions” that apply to only certain jurisdictions. A core special provision is the Section 5 preclearance requirement, which prohibited certain jurisdictions from implementing any change affecting voting without receiving preapproval from the U.S. attorney general or the U.S. District Court for D.C. to ensure that the change does not discriminate against protected minorities. Another special provision requires jurisdictions containing significant language minority populations to provide bilingual ballots and other election materials.

Section 5 and most other special provisions applied to jurisdictions encompassed by the “coverage formula” prescribed in Section 4(b). The coverage formula was originally designed to encompass jurisdictions that engaged in egregious voting discrimination in 1965, and Congress updated the formula in 1970 and 1975. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula as unconstitutional, leaving Section 5 unenforceable, relying upon the reasoning that it was no longer responsive to current conditions. The jurisdictions which had previously been covered by the coverage formula massively increased the rate of voter registration purges after the Shelby decision.

In 2021, the Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee ruling reinterpreted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, substantially weakening it. The ruling interpreted the “totality of circumstances” language of Section 2 to mean that it does not generally prohibit voting rules that have disparate impact on the groups that it sought to protect. In particular, the ruling held that fears of election fraud could justify such rules, even without evidence that any such fraud had occurred in the past or that the new rule would make elections safer.

Research shows that the Act had successfully and massively increased voter turnout and voter registrations, in particular among Black people. In Mississippi alone, voter turnout among Black people increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969. The Act has also been linked to concrete outcomes, such as greater public goods provision (such as public education) for areas with higher Black population shares, and more members of Congress who vote for civil rights-related legislation.

Last month, the Supreme Court announced they would revisit Section 2 in upcoming months and in a 5-4 vote reinstated an Alabama congressional map that a lower court found had diluted the voting power of Blacks in the state. In a case from Arizona last year, the justices had already narrowed the reach of Section 2 as they upheld policies requiring ballots cast by people at the wrong precinct to be wholly discarded and criminalizing third-party collection of absentee ballots, such as at nursing homes.

Alabama's population is 27% Black, and in the February 2022 case, Merrill v. Milligan (2/7/22), the court upheld the creation of a redistricting map that would provide Blacks the opportunity to elect their preferred candidate in only one of the state's seven congressional districts. The three liberal justices dissented and warned that if the Supreme Court fully accepts Alabama's legal rationale for opposing a second majority-Black district in the state, it “would rewrite decades of this Court's precedent” that has given racial minorities an equal opportunity to participate in elections. By allowing the state to use that map, Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, the court “does a disservice to Black Alabamians who under that precedent have had their electoral power diminished -- in violation of a law this Court once knew to buttress all of American democracy.”

Sources
Voting Rights Act of 1965 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965)
History of Federal Voting Rights Laws: The Voting Rights Act of 1965. United States Department of Justice
Voting Rights Act of 1965. History.com.
Voting Rights Act (https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_Rights_Act)
Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, 594 U.S. ___ (2021)
Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013)
The Supreme Court may completely hollow out the Voting Rights Act by 2024  (https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/08/politics/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-2024-election/index.html)

Happy February! We'd like to introduce ourselves as the three members of the 2022 Publicity Committee. Andrea Velasquez, Jill Schubert, and Joceline Herman as the WLS Publicity Committee have the privilege of publicizing WLS and affiliate events across our website, the new WLS blog (formerly the WLS newsletter), and our social media channels (make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.) We also list and publicize legal industry job openings in the Sacramento are.

If you have any events or job openings you would like to advertise to WLS members, please reach out to us. And in the meantime, we invite you to visit our website and follow us on your social media channels of choice. We look forward to serving WLS this year!

​A New Year is a chance for a new start. While we enter the third year of life upended by COVID-19, WLS will remain a constant. As the organization enters the year of its 60th Anniversary, WLS will continue to provide opportunities for networking and professional development and give back to our community. 

The 2022 WLS Board is an accomplished, bold, and impressive group and we have great things planned! The following list highlights some of the things we are working on for 2022:

• We are now offering a 25% Membership Discount to anyone who is also a member of a Sacramento County Bar Association Affiliate Organization. If you have not renewed your WLS Membership, now is the time!  Simply click the “Join” tab on our website - https://www.womenlawyers-sacramento.org/join.html.
• Our Programs Committee will be hosting events in February, June, and November.  And our Career Advancement and Retention Committee will be hosting events in April, July, and October. MCLE credits will be offered when appropriate.  More details about these events will be posted under the “Events” tab on our website as they become available- https://www.womenlawyers-sacramento.org/events.html.
• The Quarterly WLS Newsletter will be shifting to an online platform with monthly content and can be found at the “WLS News” page on our website - https://www.womenlawyers-sacramento.org/wls-news.
• 2022 is the 60th Anniversary of WLS!  We are planning an event to commemorate this occasion, tentatively scheduled to take place in May 2022.
• ArtFest will be held from September 29, 2022 – October 1, 2022.  The sip n' see will be held on Thursday, September 29th and will be the kick-off for bidding on the silent auction items.  Add these dates to your calendars now because this is not an event to be missed!  More information about ArtFest can be found on our website - https://www.womenlawyers-sacramento.org/artfest.html.
• COVID permitting, we anticipate hosting our annual Supreme Court Reception in November.

It is an absolute honor to serve as the 2022 President of WLS.  I look forward to connecting with our members over the next year, whether virtual or in person, and having some fun along the way!