More than a quarter of federal district courts have never had a non-white judge, Bloomberg Law found in its reporting “The Color of Justice: All-White Benches Persist in US District Courts.” The coverage won the 2024 Azbee Awards’ Multi-Platform Package of the Year.
Bloomberg Law’s story focused on Georgia’s Southern District to explain why so many federal courts have not had a person of color on the bench.
Those interviewed included Ed Tarver, a former US attorney for the Southern District of Georgia. Tarver was thought to be a front-runner to become the district’s first Black federal trial judge if there had been a vacancy on the bench when Barack Obama was president. Tarver has since passed away.
“The entry was an extremely well-founded multimedia package that was well thought-out, well executed and well produced,” one Azbee judge said.
Another judge added, “excellent use of written word, podcast and video.”
Bloomberg Law Judiciary Reporter Tiana Headley worked on the story along with Data Reporter Nicole Sadek. In addition, Headley and video producer Andrew Satter made a trip to Georgia’s Southern District to cover the story.
Headley said the idea for the story began with a review of data about the demographic composition of the federal courts.
“I found that at the time, 13 percent or so of [federal court] judges were Black, and I thought, wow, that’s amazing,” Headley said. “That’s like the population of the US. We did it. We solved the problem of equal representation.”
But upon closer look, there were differences between districts. Taking a deeper dive into the composition of the courts, Bloomberg Law found that 25 of the 94 US District Courts have never had a non-white judge.
The statistic was astounding, particularly when two recent presidents, Obama and Biden, have made diversity in appointments a priority, Headley said.
“Our angle went through a couple of different drafts, if you will, or iterations where finally we got to ‘Why don’t we write a story focusing on why this is the case, that this percentage of the US trial courts have never had a non-white judge’ and think through how do we use one example — one of these courts — as a case study to tell a broader story of why this is?” Headley said.
The focus turned to the Southern District of Georgia, which includes Augusta and Savannah.
District courts that have not had a non-white judge include Vermont, New Hampshire, Alaska and elsewhere, but the Southern District of Georgia was a particularly blatant example, John Martin, editor at large, said.
“I mean, we’re talking about a district where a third of the population is Black,” Martin said. He also noted any story involving race at the center can be fraught.
“I thought Tiana did an awesome job of being incredibly careful and incredibly balanced and incredibly focused on what we could say, what was fact, what was worth pointing out,” he said.
The team also knew it was doing something important when it moved forward to make the piece a multimedia package, said Josh Block, executive producer, video and audio.
“This had a lot of elements that make a great video,” Block said. “Tiana was going to go to Georgia, so Andrew [Satter], our producer [thought] this is a great opportunity, I’ll be there for the interviews.”
Martin noted the two mediums of print and video play off one another, and he now has reporters take photos and videos when on location.
“When we tell reporters to go out into the field now, we’re always telling them to take photos, take video recordings because we know that helps to build a story,” he said. “Even if we don’t use it publicly, she or he can go back to the phone or whatever and that helps them tell the story by seeing the actual video and audio.”
It took five months to put the project together.
In addition to Headley, Martin, Satter and Block, those working on the story included Jonathan Hurtarte, senior graphic designer; Seth Stern, editor, news team lead; and Nicole Sadek, data reporter.
Headley said the videos of the elder statesmen, the Black attorneys in Georgia, really brought the story home.
“To hear their voices and see their mannerisms and witness just through video of their greatness, I just felt really — I’ve got to repeat this cliché — brought it to life,” she said. “Brought the fact that this was a story about people to life.”
Bloomberg Law serves mainly lawyers, though readers also include tax practitioners, lobbyists, corporate executives, labor union officials, consultants, government managers and members of Congress. See the publication’s winning entry here, as well as the other national winners from the 2024 Azbee Awards.