Pierce County judge joins state’s high court. ‘She’s been an example of what we could be’
Justice G. Helen Whitener has a saying: “Be visible, be vocal and be vigilant.”
That applies to anything, Whitener says, whether someone wants to be president of the United States or ace a test.
“Whatever you truly believe in, you should be willing to speak up about it or speak up for it,” Whitener told The News Tribune. “You should be vigilant in pursuing it, and you should be visible.”
The 55-year-old former Pierce County Superior Court judge was appointed as the newest Washington State Supreme Court justice April 13.
Gov. Jay Inslee called Whitener a “fierce advocate for justice and equity” in announcing her appointment, and said she was the first immigrant-born judge on the Superior Court and the first black, openly LGBTQ judge in the state.
Whitener moved to the United States from Trinidad as a teenager. She has worked as a prosecutor, defense attorney, Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals Judge and was appointed to the Superior Court bench in 2015. Now she replaces retiring Justice Charles Wiggins.
“I think my lens, because of my marginalization, is going to be helpful,” Whitener said. “But I see myself as representing all Washingtonians.”
She said people have questioned her ability to be fair and impartial and that she’s quite sure she’s proven those people wrong. The online databases for the state Commission on Judicial Conduct and the Washington State Bar Association don’t show any findings against Whitener.
“I have made decisions that weren’t necessarily favorable for any particular subset of who I am, but I was bound by the law, so I made the decision and let the chips fall where they may,” she said. “That’s what it’s about. Sometimes the hard call requires that you do what is right in the law, even though you may personally not believe in that position.”
Michael Kawamura, the director of the Pierce County Department of Assigned Counsel, said he has known Whitener for several years.
“She accepted case appointments from our office and worked on a number of significant cases including several Class A felony matters,” Kawamura said. “She was knowledgeable and committed to ensuring due process to her clients.”
He said she also served on their advisory board “and was a welcome and appreciated voice regarding equal justice and appropriate court process.”
As a judge, he said, Whitener “continued to ensure equal justice to all who appeared in front of her. She was seen as a judge who expected litigants to be prepared and professional and held herself to the same standard.”
Kawamura also noted Whitener’s work ethic.
She did three years on a civil law rotation in Pierce County. When she finished an 18-month rotation she asked for another 18.
“My colleagues thought I had lost my mind,” she said with a laugh. “... I enjoyed the civil rotation. The attorneys are top notch. They challenged me. The areas of law are so diverse, I literally was working all the time, which is something I enjoy.”
In a decision last year Whitener ruled that the city of Tacoma wrongly withheld 546 pages of records from a former police officer. The city had not paid the $2,607,940 as of earlier this year, pending appeal. The penalties appeared to be among the biggest ever in the state for nondisclosure.
Toby Nixon, president of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, told The News Tribune at the time: “Nobody could think of a larger award.”
In 2018, Nixon said he was impressed with Whitener’s “thorough analysis,” in another public records case against the city, and her “recognition of the damage to future access that Tacoma’s position would produce if allowed to stand and not adequately deterred through penalties.”
In that case she ordered the city to pay almost $300,000 in penalties and fees for violating the state’s Public Records Act by improperly withholding documents about a police surveillance tool called a cell site simulator. That also wasn’t paid as of earlier this year, pending appeal.
That same year Whitener ordered Backpage.com, its owners and the former CEO to pay $200,000 in sanctions to two teenagers who allege they were sold for sex on the website. The girls’ attorneys argued the defendants made misrepresentations as part of the lawsuit.
Now, she said she’s looking forward to the Supreme Court’s heavy caseload.
Moved to the United State as teenager
Whitener was 16 when she moved from Trinidad to the United States when a back condition required medical treatment that wasn’t available in her native country. She started college during her rehabilitation.
“That was truly helpful to me emotionally,” she said. “It took me five years to complete a four-year program, because I had relapses.”
She uses a cane some days and expects to have another surgery at some point.
“I see it as a positive,” she said. “If I can do it — and I’m not saying it because I’m all that and a bag of chips — but if I can get up in the morning and manipulate my back and get out there and connect with students and do something for someone, I usually ask my mentees, what’s your excuse? I use it to push them.”
In an interview with the magazine of the Seattle University School of Law, her alma mater, Whitener said she imagined she’d be a businesswoman. A colleague at an accounting firm she once worked at in Bellevue encouraged her to apply to law school, because of her analytical skills.
Whitener told The News Tribune that she particularly liked trial work as an attorney. She thinks that’s because she wanted to be a teacher like her parents. As a child she used to sit her cousins down and teach them what she’d been learning in school.
“Something I would hear people say about my performance is that it was as though I was teaching them about an issue or about my client or about the state’s case,” she said.
Whitener has been particularly involved in mentoring and teaching.
“I have lost count of the young people from all walks of life who have told me personally that Judge Whitener has inspired them to pursue a career in the law, that she has demonstrated to them a career in the law or any profession that they want to be in is open to them, and that’s because she works so hard to connect the legal community to the greater community, and especially to children and to youth,” said attorney John Cummings.
Cummings has known Whitener for about 10 years and said she’s become a mentor.
“I thought it was going to be: I’ll meet with a judge one time and see what advice she has for me as a LGBT attorney practicing in Pierce County,” he said. “I think she was the one that said: ‘You know, I would like to be a mentor to you.’”
He called Whitener incredibly impartial and fair.
“I have gotten rulings in her court that I didn’t like, and I have a lot of respect and admiration for her,” he said. “... She recognizes that her job is to rule in the right way according to the law. She doesn’t show favorites.”
Attorney Andrea Jarmon, another mentee, said the same. She’s known Whitener for about seven years.
The decisions before Whitener “will be decided with an exceptional level of legal brilliance that’s also guided by the human element of her varied experience,” Jarmon said.
She recalled a trial in front of Whitener that ended with Jarmon’s client relinquishing her parental rights.
“During the middle of the trial, I had asked my client, who happened to be an African American mother, about whether she thought she had the capacity to parent her children,” Jarmon said. “... It was a real, human, heartbreaking moment, because she started to cry and she said no.”
Whitener suggested a recess, and, when they returned, the woman chose to relinquish her rights.
Whitener then spoke and was able to “make this mother in this vulnerable, difficult moment, make her feel at peace and OK with the decision,” Jarmon said. “... I was sad for my client, but even in that moment of difficulty for her was just such compassion.”
Jarmon said her own daughters participated in an event Whitener hosted in Pierce County called the Color of Justice, which is now held statewide. It encourages youths to consider careers in the law.
“(Whitener) had local girls come in, and really it was a program that was lifting them up and gave them an eye to what they could be, and that’s what she’s done for so many of the lawyers of color, especially women, around here,” said Lisa Mansfield, an attorney with the Pierce County Department of Assigned Counsel. “She’s been an example of what we could be.”
Mansfield noted that Whitener has not changed as a person as she’s risen in her career. And at times, she said, Whitener can take stances that might not necessarily be politically popular.
“She’s always herself, regardless of how the winds are blowing,” Mansfield said. “I remember she said one time: ‘I’m here to do a job, not here to keep a job.’”
Whitener herself noted that she had to run for election right away after she was appointed to the Superior Court.
“I always said, ‘I am here for a limited time,’” she said. “I don’t know when that may end, so I’m going to make the biggest impact I can.”
She noted: “If they get rid of me, I’m going to have a line of different mentees ready to replace me. They need to be prepared.”
Overcoming marginalization
Whitener has spoken publicly about her experience as a black, gay, female, immigrant and disabled judge.
She was stopped by a guard at the courthouse after hours when she arrived to prepare for a youth event she was hosting there the next day.
“In his mind I didn’t look like I belonged in the building,” she said. “When the supervisor came down the supervisor recognized me, and that’s when the individual became apologetic.”
Whitener’s photo was on the wall behind them, her courtroom was around the corner and she had her access card.
“His response was: ‘Well you should have told me,’” she said. “And that’s not me, you shouldn’t have to treat me any differently because you happen to know my title. ... I could have been the janitor for all that we know. It shouldn’t have mattered. It’s obvious I had access to the building.”
Whitener said in a Pierce County TV video in February, in which she talked about being stopped: “No matter what my title is, when I walk into the building I can also feel excluded. I believe as a marginalized individual, being a black, gay, female, immigrant, disabled judge, that my perspective is a little different, so I try to make sure that everyone who comes into this courtroom feels welcome, feels safe and feels like they will get a fair hearing.”
She was concerned that she could be arrested when she traveled back to Trinidad and Tobago as part of a humanitarian mission in 2015 to speak about human rights. Being openly gay was a crime there at the time.
“But I felt a little secure in that I had the U.S. embassy behind us,” she said.
Since then the law has been found unconstitutional.
Roughly four years ago she gave a talk for TedxPortofSpain, during part of which she described telling her parents at the age of 19 that she was a lesbian.
“My father, a religious man, responded with unconditional love and respect,” she told the crowd. “My mother, also a religious woman, responded quite differently.”
Whitener didn’t see or speak to her mother for almost three years.
“... she was able to overcome her intolerance and reach a place of respect,” Whitener told the audience, in which her mother was present. The two have a loving and respectful relationship.
“Ladies and gentleman, I respect an individual’s position and views on any and all aspects of me,” Whitener said during the talk. “All I ask is they respect my position to respectfully disagree.”
She spoke about going to church with her mother on a visit and how a woman there was struggling with Whitener’s sexual orientation. The woman told Whitener she was going to pray for her, and pray that she find a man.
The woman thought enough of her to include her in her prayers, Whitener noted, and she prayed for something she “actually needed.”
“My wife and I are busy professionals, and we have plenty chores,” Whitener told the crowd, to laughter and applause. “And any help that we can get is truly appreciated.”
Whitener’s talk for TedxPortofSpain also addressed a time, before becoming a judge, that she didn’t get a supervisory position she had applied for.
She was told she was the most qualified and experienced applicant, but that she had not been in the office long enough.
“I accepted the response, until the very next day I was asked to perform the duties of the recently promoted supervisor,” Whitener told the audience. “And when I asked why, check this out, I was told that the recently promoted supervisor did not have the experience and qualifications yet, and was being trained.”
Supreme Court appointment
Asked about the moment she learned she was appointed to the state’s high court and telling her family, Whitener said her wife, retired U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Lynn Rainey, was elated.
Then they told Whitener’s mother.
“If you know my mother, you would chuckle,” Whitener said. “Her response was: ‘Well, I always knew.’”
When they called Whitener’s brother, he just kept screaming into the phone.
“You wouldn’t expect that from him,” she said. “He’s an engineer. He’s kind of low key.”
What Whitener said she didn’t expect is what it would mean to others in the community.
“I had people in tears,” Whitener said. “And I still haven’t, I guess, digested what it means to them. I’ve always just done what I thought was right, but I didn’t know that it was having that kind of impact on folks, so that is something that caught me off guard, for sure.”
Now, she’s turning her attention to her new role. The court has oral arguments May 5.
“I have a lot of things to do and a lot of reading to do,” she said. “And I’m excited about it.”
