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Just the right pick

Alumna known for thoughtfulness, work ethic joins busy federal bench

By California State University, Bakersfield

May 3^rd, 2022

Walking into federal court is intimidating for many defendants and even some lawyers, says criminal defense attorney David Torres. The courtrooms are massive and the title of the case announces you’re up against The United States of America.

But when Torres’ clients walked out of their initial appearance before Judge Jennifer Thurston, they at least understood the charges, what would happen to them next and why, he says.

Thurston sometimes even turned to their mother and explained why she was detaining their child or, conversely, how she expected them to report any violations of their release terms.

“The thing about her is that she’s very personable, she will break down what the government is doing, what she is doing, and it makes the defendants, including their family members, very comfortable,” he said. “For the most part, people leave her court understanding why she took the action she did against them.”

It's that thoughtful consideration of the law and of people — without sacrificing much-needed judicial efficiency — that made Thurston the right pick for district judge in the Eastern District of California late last year, her colleagues say.

The 1989 CSUB alumna is also a historic pick.

Thurston is only the second woman to serve California’s vast eastern district, and the first to serve its Fresno division. Her nomination by President Joe Biden last September was part of a concerted effort to add more women to the federal bench.

Seventy-six percent of Biden’s judicial appointees have been women as of April 6, according to the nonprofit Demand Justice. Only 35 percent of active federal judges are women, according to the Federal Judicial Center.

Thurston doesn’t believe one’s gender, race or sexual orientation makes one a better or fairer judge. But she does believe the judiciary should reflect the people it serves. And for some reason, she said, Eastern District of California judges have featured diversity of color, geography and sexual orientation, but not gender.

“I can’t criticize the quality of the judicial officers we’ve had. I mean they’re incredible,” Thurston said from her new chambers in Fresno. “But I just think historically, women have had a more difficult time breaking into these types of roles. And it’s important that the districts, and all of the courts, look more like their communities because it offers legitimacy.”

Thurston received the lifetime appointment after 12 years as Bakersfield’s magistrate judge, which presides over federal pre-trial and non-felony criminal matters and civil cases when the parties consent. Before that she was a star attorney in the Kern County Counsel’s office.

Both jobs – and really her entire professional life going back to her hamburger-flipping days at age 14 – came with grueling workloads. That experience will serve her well in California’s eastern district, where judges typically handle 900 cases at a time, twice the national average. Its judges call it a crisis.

“I appreciate the extraordinary burden that that will place on me and my family,” Thurston told the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing last October. “But I do have this second family, this court family, that I want to step up and help more than I have already.”

The U.S. Senate votes on Jennifer Thurston's nomination to the federal bench. — Thurston tried not to take it personally when only three Republicans crossed the aisle and voted to confirm her: “It was a good reminder that when people come before me and I make rulings, it isn’t personal to me but it is very personal to them.”

'Quick with her words'

Thurston has deep family roots in the district. Her father, Clifton Calderwood, grew up poor in Taft, so poor that as a child he pulled nails out of boards and straightened them for use building his family’s home from scraps. He went on to earn an entomology degree and work for the valley air district.

Her mother, Judith, whose family came to Kern County from Oklahoma, helped make ends meet by selling Avon and doing telemarketing before getting a CSUB education and becoming a teacher later in life.

“When we were kids, it was kind of normal that you got a gift at Christmas and you got one on your birthday,” she said. “It’s not like you got a gift every time you went to Target.”

The Calderwoods, circa 1970: In back are Clifton, Judith and now- Debra Cootware. In front are Thurston and now- CherAmi Daniel.

Thurston as a cheerleader at Bakersfield’s South High School.

Sitting idle was not an option for Thurston and her two older sisters. If the girls couldn’t come up with something to do, Thurston joked, their mom would choose something for them “and her ideas weren’t as fun.”

One thing Thurston loved to do was read mysteries, and it stoked an early interest in the law. Their small house had no air conditioning, only a swamp cooler that dropped down into the hallway, and so she’d typically spend warm days there with her mother and sisters reading books they checked out from the library.

Thurston had the makings of a good lawyer early on, said her oldest sister, CherAmi Daniel, a Bakersfield court investigator.

“I would get so frustrated when we’d have an argument because she was quick with her words,” Daniel said. “I couldn’t respond back because I don’t have her intellect.”

When Thurston graduated from South High School, there was little support from her close-knit family for her to go away to college when she could get a quality education at CSUB. So that’s what she did, earning a business administration degree with a concentration in marketing in 1989.

Thurston earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in marketing from CSUB in 1989.

Thurston worked as a legal messenger during college, exposing her to law firms, lawyers and the courts. But it wasn’t until graduating from CSUB, doing a little corporate marketing and auditing a law school class that she had the confidence to enroll in law school.

“I really thought law school was for fancy people who were super smart, way smarter than I was,” she said. “Then I went and sat in a class and thought, ‘Gosh, I understand what they’re talking about. I could do this.’”

Law school at the now-defunct California Pacific School of Law was a tough juggling act. She was married (her husband, Marc Thurston, is in commercial real estate), working 40 hours a week, and attending class three to four nights a week.

Still, now-Kern County Superior Court Judge Susan Gill said Thurston was her best student. She had an incredible enthusiasm for the law that has never diminished, said fellow Kern Judge David Wolf, who had Thurston as an intern in the Kern County District Attorney’s office.

“She was always excited, interested and engaged,” Wolf said. “You’d take her to court and she was always there 100 percent. And she’s still that way.”

Pushing for justice

Thurston always pictured herself a prosecutor but after she earned her law degree and passed the bar in 1997, the D.A.’s office didn’t have any openings. The Kern County Counsel’s office, which represents the Board of Supervisors and all the various county departments, did and hired Thurston.

Even before she got her bar number, Thurston wrote an appeal that became published law. It defended the constitutionality of denying a mother who’d relapsed into serious drug use the ability to reunify with her new baby, who’d been born drug-exposed.

“It was exciting to realize that you are actually helping to shape the body of law,” she said.

Thurston worked for the County Counsel’s office for 12 years. She started out advising and representing the Department of Human Services in matters involving the placement of abused and neglected children in the trial and appellate courts.

Repeated exposure to the horrific treatment of children was difficult, she said, but it was rewarding to be part of an “incredible push to find justice” as opposed to something like fighting over money.

Thurston became an appellate law specialist, a high bar to clear. There are only two in Kern County today. One of the appellate cases Thurston remembers most is one she didn’t win.

In that 1998 case, parents had horribly abused a foster child so Human Services removed her and the couple’s biological children (who were not harmed) from the home. Thurston defended the move, saying the foster and biological children were in the same role and so should be treated the same.

The California Court of Appeals disagreed, finding in 2002 that “sibling” means children who have parents in common. A legislator who shared Thurston’s outrage successfully pushed to change the law, but the law was later reversed.

Thurston also successfully argued a case before the California Supreme Court, which determined appellate attorneys could not dismiss a child’s appeal based on their determination of the child’s best interest. That determination had to be made by the child’s guardian-ad-litem, who then was the child’s trial attorney.

Retired County Counsel Bernard Barmann hired Thurston and she became one of the “anchors” of his effort to bring civil litigation work in-house to save money. She handled all kinds of disputes, from civil rights cases against the Sheriff’s Office to election law challenges, and she did it with sharp analytical skills, research acumen and speed, Barmann said.

“Some attorneys work a case to death, and it’s never over,” said Barmann, also a 2012 CSUB Alumni Hall of Fame inductee. “But we’d assign cases to her, and she’d just take care of it.”

Taking the bench

Thurston wasn’t that interested in becoming a judge until she agreed to help the swamped Superior Court by presiding over traffic court. She had fun helping people get through their cases “without it being a bad experience.”

When the magistrate judge position opened, Thurston went back and forth on whether to apply because she loved being a lawyer. She had to overnight her application to get it in on time and was “shocked” when she got the job.

“It turned out that being a magistrate judge was way better than being a lawyer,” Thurston said.

Thurston at her investiture to become Bakersfield’s magistrate judge in 2010.

Thurston performing a wedding ceremony in 2015 or 2016.

Thurston with court staff in front of the federal courthouse in Bakersfield in 2019.

Federal magistrate judges consider an “incredible” breadth of the law; there’s always something new and interesting coming up, she said.

One measure of a magistrate judge is the number of civil cases both parties consent to him or her adjudicating, said Eastern District of California Chief Judge Kimberly Mueller. Thurston had a “healthy” number of those, Mueller said.

One of Thurston’s more memorable cases was presiding over a settlement conference to redraw the Kern County supervisorial district lines, resulting in the creation of a second Latino-majority district.

While still handling a full caseload, Thurston earned a master of law in judicial studies from Duke University in North Carolina. The three-year program brings together judges from all over the world to talk about issues facing their justice systems.

Her thesis was “Black Robes, White Judges: The Lack of Diversity on the Magistrate Judge Bench.” She wondered why there was diversity among district judges, who choose magistrate judges, but not among those magistrate judges.

Thurston noted that the Administrative Office of the Courts doesn’t have any authority over the districts, so no one is ensuring diversity on the bench. She’s proud to say that the administrative office is now taking a much stronger approach, saying, “Here’s really what we think you should do when you’re selecting magistrate judges, and let us know if you actually do it.’”

Thurston at her graduation from Duke University. — Thurston earned her master of law in judicial studies from Duke University in 2018. Her classmates included members of the Arizona Supreme Court and high justices from New Zealand and Sierra Leone.

Thurston in Osaka, Japan, where she was handling two international prison transfer cases. — Thurston in, Japan to handle prisoner transfer cases. Magistrate judges travel to foreign countries where Americans are imprisoned to conduct hearings that ensure their rights before they return to the U.S. to serve the rest of their sentences.

'A local hero'

Thurston also gets a lot of kudos for her extensive community service work. She’s been a regular guest speaker at CSUB Pre-Law events, volunteered as a judge and coach in high school mock trial competitions and coordinated the Open Doors to Federal Courts program, which highlights for high school students career opportunities in the federal court system.

“She is a local hero,” said Wolf. “She went to CSUB, she went to the local law school, she is an outstanding role model and a great mentor.

“You can’t just hide on the bench,” he continued. “You have to get out into the community, you need young ladies to see you as a judge and think, ‘Hey, here’s somebody who went to CSUB and if she can do this, I can do this.’”

In the foreground, Thurston (in red) and Kern County Superior Court Judge Susan Gill (in gray) participate in a CSUB Speed Mentoring event for students.

One local young woman Thurston has mentored is Wolf’s daughter Emily, a UCLA master of law student who interned with Thurston in 2018.

She was struck by the firm but compassionate way Thurston treated defendants in diversion programs, like those steered toward mental health treatment rather than incarceration. Thurston would step down from the bench and sit at a table with them and their attorney to talk.

“It’s not that she was casual, she was formal and professional, but she wasn’t trying to swing a hammer at them,” Wolf said. “She would meet them where they were, and do what was best for the community and what was best for them.”

Wolf also learned from Thurston how to run a tight courtroom, like controlling juror questioning by limiting attorneys on time and reviewing questions in advance to head off issues. And she learned it’s important, and possible, to have work-life balance, said Wolf, who plans to take the bar exam in July and join the Orange County Public Defender’s office.

“I observed from Judge Thurston that you can have a personal life and be a great lawyer and a great judge,” she said.

Thurston handling court proceedings via Zoom in 2022.

'A perfect fit'

Thurston is working in one of eight judicial districts nationwide with crisis-level caseloads. Congress has failed to add a permanent district judgeship to the eastern district since 1978 despite it growing from 2.5 million to more than 8 million residents.

The district is also busy because it includes the state capital, a lot of public land, several prisons, big water cases and many landowner challenges of government regulations, Mueller, it chief judge, said.

Thurston knew what she was getting into and is well-prepared for the job, said Mueller, who is clearly thrilled to have a second woman serving the eastern district 12 years after she became the first. (If Biden appointee Ana de Alba of Fresno is confirmed, she will be the third.)

Thurston can multitask, is measured and brings an experienced staff, Mueller said. And she knows the district well.

“It’s a quintessential local-girl-makes-good story. She just worked her way up,” Mueller said. “Like many of us, she didn’t plan to be district judge. She didn’t even plan to be a magistrate judge. But she followed her heart, and her career organically developed into her being a perfect fit to be a district judge.”

Torres recalled attending an event where an audience member asked Eastern District Judge Lawrence J. O’Neill if it matters whether a judge is appointed by a Republican or a Democrat. Thurston was there, too, he said.

“Judge O’Neill responded, ‘If the judge is honest, it doesn’t matter if the judge is appointed by someone on the right or the left, that ultimately that judge will end up in the middle,’” Torres said.

“It was such a beautiful response, it’s a response people not familiar with the federal courts need to understand. And based on what I’ve seen thus far, Judge Thurston is that honest judge. And I know that she will end up in the middle.”