As a young girl, future California Supreme Court Associate Justice Kelli Evans was more excited about the bookmobile coming through her Denver neighborhood than the ice cream truck.
"I was a voracious reader," the first out lesbian on California's highest court told Out in the Bay Queer Radio + Podcast during a conversation airing this week on San Francisco radio stations KSFP and KALW. Evans said she read an entire set of encyclopedias from A-Z and again from Z-A bought for her by her grandmother, who "probably paid a usurious amount" for the set, along with countless more books during her childhood.
Evans, who is Black, sworn in January 2, joined Associate Justice Martin Jenkins as the second out LGBTQ person on the state's high court. Jenkins, a Black gay man who joined the high court in late 2020, spoke with Out in the Bay in 2021.
At her swearing-in, Governor Gavin Newsom noted that Evans was raised by her grandmother and stressed that she was raised in public housing.
"I understand what it's like to live in poverty. I understand what it's like to be raised by a single parent — by a grandparent. I have a perspective and an experience that not a lot of lawyers have, not a lot of judges have," Evans told Out in the Bay.
"I think that may have stood out to the governor," said Evans, as well as a recognition "that there are lots of brilliant, extremely hard-working ingenious poor people."
Evans served as Newsom's chief deputy legal affairs secretary until her gubernatorial appointment in 2021 to fill a vacancy on the Alameda County Superior Court, where she served for about a year before being elevated to the state supreme court.
Evans said she buried her UC Davis law degree original with her grandmother "because it belonged to her." Evans said she and her siblings are "direct manifestations of her deliberate, intentional actions to make sure we had opportunities that she was denied."
She knew she wanted to be a lawyer from the age of 6 or 7. "I used to watch 'Perry Mason' with my grandmother," she said. "I don't know if that was the spark or not, but ... in my child mind I thought being a lawyer had something to do with fairness. And lawyers got to argue. Maybe I was an argumentative child, I don't know."
But Evans said she did know at that young age that her relatives, friends, and neighbors were "incredibly smart, incredibly funny, incredibly hard-working, [yet] didn't have the opportunities or creature comforts that I saw on TV and in movies and that so many other people in society had." The inequality "didn't sit right" with her so she aimed to do something about it.
On her historic appointment as the first openly LGBTQ woman on California's highest court and one of its women of color, Evans said she's "proud and honored to be a first," but acknowledged standing on the shoulders of those before her and hopes to be a role model for others.
Hear more from Justice Kelli Evans on this week's Out in the Bay Queer Radio + Podcast. The program airs as part of the Queer Power Hour at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 9, on KALW, 91.7 FM SF Bay Area-wide, at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 9, and 8:30 a.m. Saturday, March 11, on KSFP, 102.5 FM SF only. It is available now on Out in the Bay's website.
Eric Jansen is founding producer and host of Out in the Bay — Queer Radio from San Francisco. Learn more and listen here.
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