Federal Court In Texas Goes Woke

The essential function of the Court is to “create and maintain diversity”.

Here’s a pretty astonishing public notice for the appointment of a Magistrate Judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas:

Got that?

“The essential function of the Court is to dispense justice and create and maintain diversity in the court system. A community’s belief is heightened when the Court dispenses justice that reflects the community’s racial, ethnic, and gender diversity.”

As of publication, the post is still up on the official website of the Court. You can access it here.

We’ve reached the point in the woke religion where it’s no longer enough for our civil institutions to promote diversity. Doing so is now explicitly defined as the essential function of a U.S. District Court.

The second sentence of the notice is nearly as remarkable. One would hope that a “community’s belief” [presumably in the efficacy of the justice system, although the belief’s object is conspicuously left undefined] would be heightened by justice dispensed with perfect impartiality. In other words, a Court that dispenses justice without regard to the racial, ethnic, and gender “diversity” of the community is the only Court worthy of trust. Our country’s history is littered with foreboding examples of a justice system that dispensed justice with far too much regard for the racial and ethnic make-up of defendants. Why is the woke Left seeking to return to a similar system?

One genuinely fears where this could lead. Lady Justice, a common symbol on courthouses throughout America and the broader West, has been depicted wearing a blindfold since at least the 16thcentury. Think about that: so central is the idea of impartiality to a functioning judicial system that a blindfold has become ingrained in the system’s marquee symbol. But now, not only is impartiality apparently obsolete, it’s antithetical to the very function of the court. After all, Lady Justice would be hard-pressed to “create diversity” blindfolded.

It’s worth noting, too, that this isn’t the historically progressive 9thCircuit Court in San Francisco. This is a District Court in Waco, the heart of Texas, and home of Baptist Baylor University. Indeed, McLennan County, of which Waco is the county seat, voted for Trump 60-37% in 2020. It hasn’t gone for a Democrat in a presidential election since 1976.

Notices like this from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas are a reminder that for all the many, “conservative” judges appointed in the Trump administration, our woke ruling class persists unabated. Our country’s elite institutions, the gatekeepers to power in every sector of our society, demand complete obedience to the woke agenda. And they enforce it unceasingly.

In this light, perhaps it’s not surprising that the MAGA rioters from January 2021 and the BLM rioters from June 2020 have met very different fates in our legal system. It’s not hypocrisy, it’s hierarchy. No matter which president appoints the judges, the justice system moves forward, seeking to fulfill its “essential function” of “creating and maintaining diversity.”

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This article was published on August 2, 2021 and is reproduced with permission by The American Conservative.