Irma Carrillo Ramirez, a US magistrate judge whose parents met working west Texas cotton fields, won bipartisan confirmation as the first Latina to serve on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Ramirez, 59, was confirmed, 80-12, on Monday. Her supporters on confirmation included Republican home state senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz of Texas.
Those lawmakers as well as lawyers and judges look to Ramirez as a step toward more Hispanic representation among judges in the state.
“Judge Ramirez is a pillar of the Dallas legal community, a longtime leader in our Hispanic community, and a wonderful role model for Hispanic law students, lawyers, and judges,” said Carla V. Green, president of the Dallas Hispanic Bar Association.
She’ll replace Gregg Costa, a Barack Obama appointee who resigned in August 2022 and is now in private practice.
Father’s Influence
Ramirez’s father came to the US in the 1950s as part of the Bracero program, which brought Mexican men to the US on short-term labor contracts. She was born in Brownfield, Texas, and raised on a ranch in Tokio, where her father encouraged her to study hard so she wouldn’t have to work in the fields like he did.
“My summers spent hoeing cotton in those fields only served to reinforce his message,” Ramirez said at her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing. “Becoming a judge, or even a lawyer, was so far beyond his hope of an ‘inside job’ for me, that we couldn’t begin to imagine it, much less dream it.”
She graduated from what’s now known as West Texas A&M University before earning her law degree from Southern Methodist University with help from a scholarship designed to help minority students who planned to practice law in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
She spent four years at the Dallas office of the firm now known as Locke Lord and then joined the US attorney’s office in the Northern District of Texas. She worked on an organized crime and drug enforcement task force as well as in the office’s civil division. Since 2002, she’s served as a US magistrate judge in the same district.
In 20 years as a magistrate judge, Ramirez issued approximately 335 memorandum opinions and orders, 4,653 findings, conclusions and recommendations and 16,523 orders on motions, according to her answers to the Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire.
“Judge Ramirez’s distinguished track record of judicial excellence throughout her decades of service in Texas makes her exceptionally qualified for the Fifth Circuit,” Cornyn and Cruz said in a joint statement following her nomination in April.
Next Generation
Ramirez is the latest in a string of historic judicial “firsts” for President Joe Biden. He’s stressed professional, gender, and racial diversity in his appointments to a federal bench that’s historically been white and male.
Ramirez also represents a chance to improve Latino representation among federal judges in Texas, the Hispanic National Bar Association said in an endorsement letter.
“Even as we write this letter, there is not a single Hispanic Article III Judge based in Dallas, Texas, a city with one of the largest concentrations of Hispanics in all the nation,” the HNBA wrote
Green said Ramirez devotes “countless hours to the Dallas Hispanic legal community by participating in panel discussions and law-related programs,” hiring diverse law clerks, “and attending bar association activities that elevate diverse communities.”
She also provides advice to SMU students seeking a career in law and serves on the law school’s executive board.
“She is invested in the next generation of the lawyers at all levels,” assistant dean Christine P. Leatherberry wrote in an email. “Students love hearing her speak about the importance of public service and justice in the legal profession.”
Judicial Nominations
Obama nominated Ramirez to be a district court judge in the Northern District of Texas in 2016. She had a confirmation hearing, but never received a Judiciary Committee vote.
Cornyn, in introducing Ramirez at her Fifth Circuit confirmation hearing in May, noted her recommendation was the result of the bipartisan process the Texas senators use to identify candidates.
Lawyers apply for district and appellate slots and are evaluated by a bipartisan evaluation committee made up of Texas lawyers, Cornyn said. “Ms. Ramirez came out number one in that process,” he said.
He added: “This is an example of how, I think, the process should work—with collaboration, consultation, and by consensus.”
Craig Albert, who represented an agent of a bankrupt medical providers’ trust before Ramirez, spoke highly of the judge’s professionalism.
“Ramirez has great judicial temperament and runs an efficient docket and brings a lot of legal acumen to the court,” Albert said.