It was a brisk sunny day in 1996 at a little deli on 2nd St. in San Francisco that I had lunch with Justice Janice Rogers Brown, now at the center of a storm over judicial confirmation in the U.S. Senate. It was suppose to be my lunch treat (at a deli) for Janice since, Governor Pete Wilson had just appointed her to the California Supreme Court. I was elated! Months before we had served together on a California Commission agonizing over the plight of the African American male and why a certain age group of Black males had over 30% unemployment, almost 40% in the criminal justice system, over 20% with no high school diploma and 20% below the poverty line. Armed with this exposure, I pressed closer with great confidence, “Janice, we (African Americans) are looking for you to do the right thing for civil rights and affirmative action.” She countered quickly, “Fred, I am in step with all the things we worked for on the Commission.”

However, in November 2001 on a test case of Proposition 209, she wrote the majority opinion “trashing” affirmative action so badly, that I was shocked. Even the Chief Justice admonished her for her extremist and harsh review.

Today, as President Bush’s nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, she is opposed not only by leaders of the Bar Association, women and civil rights organizations, but a broad cross section of moderate America. She is considered such a right wing extremist; some say that if she reaches the Supreme Court bench through the Court of Appeals, she would make conservative Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas look like civil rights activists Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton. Moderates fear that she will erect barriers for victims of discrimination, totally block affirmative action or diversity and undermine privacy, equal protection, environmental protection; to name a few. U.S. Senate Democratic Minority Leader, Senator Harry Reid, D-Nev., says, “Brown, wants to take America back to the 19th century and undo SOCIAL SECURITY!” Even U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer said that she was “so far out of the mainstream, that it’s outrageous!”

Supporters of Brown say that she is entitled to her own opinion and she is not required to follow a story line, a party line or a gender line. Others say it is nothing more than a liberal attack on a well-qualified African American woman who has a conservative viewpoint. But San Francisco’s Aileen Hernandez, a former member of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and past president of the National Organization of Women (NOW), speaking on Black pride and social justice for an African American woman said, “Those who have spent our lives in the struggle against institutionalized discrimination and economic disparity, find little reason for “sisterhood with her.”

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