Ned Lamont’s Justice Problem. Governor Again Declines to Appoint Black to High Court.

Governor Ned Lamont spoke often and at length in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 murder of George Floyd about diversity among law enforcement and judges. On June 1st of that year, Lamont joined WNPR’s Lucy Nalpathanchil on “Where We Live” and discussed what he was doing to make Connecticut a more just place.

After a weekend of protests across the nation, Lamont told Nalpathanchil that he is was “totally at one with the people who are standing up…the progress is so slow.” The first term governor said he’d told members of the state legislature’s Black and Puerto Rican Caucus, “I need your help when recruiting not just teachers but judges…we have a long way to go.”

The Greenwich Democrat has done nothing to ease or shorten the journey to the State Supreme Court for Black lawyers and judges. The fourth generation aristocrat Wednesday appointed another white appellate judge to the high court. It is Lamont’s second appointment to the court in more than three years in office and his second elevation of a white judge.

Lamont chose Judge Joan Alexander to replace his first appointment to the Supreme Court, Christine Keller. Both are white. Alexander appears to have been a late prospect. She attended a secret session of the Judicial Selection Commission (JSC) at 11 a.m. on April 1st for a 30-minute “[I]nterview for elevation to the Supreme Court,” according to the commission’s agenda, which is also hidden from public view.

Many hopefuls will spend painful years on the list of candidates approved for the state’s highest court. Judge Alexander was on it for 12 days before Lamont appointed her today. This has the look of a nomination rigged by privileged insiders. Alexander is a respected judge but members of the Supreme Court need not be plucked from the lower ranks of the state’s judiciary. Two of the seven members now serving were not judges before Governor Dannel P. Malloy bestowed the honor on them.

Judge Alexander now claims what some observers of the process have dubbed the Mommy Seat, in honor of Speaker of the House Matthew Ritter helping his mom, Justice Keller, win her seat in 2020. Judge Alexander will be eligible to serve for 11 years. Lamont will have done nothing to transform his aspirations into action on the Supreme Court.

In February, President Biden nominated then-Judge Ketjani Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. She became the first Black female justice last week. Lamont wrote of her nomination, “I applaud President Biden’s choice and commend his commitment to ensuring that our nation’s highest court better reflects the nation itself.”

In case the governor is confused, he should know that the qualifications to serve on the Supreme Court are not the same as those to become a member of the lily white Round Hill Club that Lamont belonged to for so many years before quitting to jump into state politics in 2006.

Published April 14, 2022.