Kemi Mustapha Appointed to Santa Clara County Superior Court
We are excited to share that on Friday, October 3rd, Kemi Mustapha was sworn in as a new Judge of the Santa Clara County Superior Court.
Kemi worked at Bay Area Legal Aid for the last 15 years. She started as a volunteer attorney in our SF office and then as an Equal Justice Works fellow whose project focused on providing family law advocacy to Black survivors of domestic violence. Over the years, she practiced as an attorney in several of BayLegal’s offices gaining experience in multiple Bay Area counties and courts – representing survivors of abuse in family law and immigration matters – before becoming our family law supervisor helping to mentor attorneys across six Bay Area counties and coordinating regional advocacy. While the heart of her work was representing individual survivors, she also engaged in matters with far-reaching impact – including publications, trainings, and appeals setting precedent to advance legal protections and access to justice for survivors throughout the state. She recently co-authored with BayLegal attorney Nicole Britton-Snyder, the first-ever Continuing Education of the Bar (CEB) chapter dedicated to domestic violence legal issues, Practice Under the Family Code. She is an excellent trainer, including training family court mediators throughout the state, and has trained numerous attorneys around CA on Family Law, immigration for survivors, and intersections with other poverty law areas.
Kemi has spent her career empowering people through her advocacy to access justice and fairness. In her years at BayLegal, Kemi helped many hundreds of survivors of DV, sexual assault, and human trafficking -and their children – get to a place of safety and stability, and importantly, to have a voice in court. She has transformed many lives. And through her supervision of attorneys throughout the Bay Area, her impact on access to justice has been even more far reaching.
This judicial appointment could not be more well-deserved and we could not be more proud. She will be an excellent addition to the judicial bench. She exemplifies sought after qualities of a good judge – from her keen intelligence, diligence, fair-mindedness and excellent judgment to her sincere humility, kindness, honesty, and patience. She treats everyone with dignity and respect.
Kemi also brings perspective that is essential to our judiciary. The State Bar’s recent Justice Gap study shows that the civil legal needs of Californians are widespread and unmet at alarming rates, with low-income people being most severely impacted, though the justice gap crosses the economic spectrum. These Californian’s experiences are often shaped by trauma, poverty, or instability. Kemi understands those realities, not in the abstract, but from years of working directly with people living them. She understands how marginalization, trauma, crisis, housing instability, and food insecurity can impact people’s lives, and shape how they present in court. She is sensitive to the diversity of identities in our communities: race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, immigration status, religion, and physical and mental ability. Kemi will never mistake hardship or personal identity for a lack of credibility or worth. That understanding is a gift to the fair administration of justice.