ABSTRACT
The [U.S. Court of Appeals for the] Ninth Circuit takes pride, justifiably, in the fact that it is the first federal court to have conducted a study of gender bias in the judicial system. We voted at our 1993 conference to conduct a similar circuit-wide study of racial, ethnic and religious bias in the judicial system. However, when a lawyer raised the subject of bias based on sexual orientation, an embarrassed silence followed. Finally, the chief judge stepped in and explained that we couldn’t take on too many problems at one time. It is doubtful that the answer convinced anyone. The subject just made our judges and lawyers too uncomfortable. 1
