Tell us about your community growing up. Looking back, how did they shape who you are now?

Born in East Oakland at my paternal grandmother’s house, I spent my early years in the Bay Area. When my parents divorced, I moved to Southern California with my mother. We moved in with my maternal grandparents, the founding pastors of a local Black Pentecostal Church and lived in a city called South Gate in South Los Angeles near Watts and Compton. During school breaks, I visited my father and his family in the Bay Area.

My upbringing in South Los Angeles situated me between unique worlds. On the one hand, my neighborhood was 95% Latinx; we were the only Black family in a community of working-class immigrants from Latin America. On the other hand, my grandparents’ South Los Angeles church community were primarily elderly Black folks. My grandparents and their congregants hailed from the South – Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi – and had moved to California during the great migration to escape Jim Crow racism in search of better economic opportunities and more fulfilling lives. Multiple times a week, I worshipped with these refugees, with their thick Southern accents and values. In the Bay Area, where I spent summers and holidays, I would visit my father and extended family. My father worked as a truck driver for Waste Management and oftentimes worked long hours and extra shifts to provide for our family. Despite his busy schedule, he was present as much as he could be. My father taught me to how to ride a bicycle and drive a car.

These three very different environments shaped me in profound ways. Growing up in a majority Latinx neighborhood taught me to appreciate Latinx culture; I was inspired to learn Spanish, travel to seven Spanish speaking countries, and even join a Mexican Folk dance group in college. Growing up in a Southern Black church instilled in me a deep sense of community – one hard to find in urban centers like Los Angeles. I remember seeing church members bring fruit that they had grown in their backyards to church services and hand it out for free. I remember post-church soul food potlucks where people took time to socialize and to reconnect after long and trouble-filled weeks. Despite being in an urban environment that many would call resource scarce, I learned how community can create an oasis of social wealth and belonging. I now work with clients in many parts of the deep South and many of these memories still help me connect to communities I serve. Seeing my father work hard as a truck driver, while making time for important moments in my life, instilled in me a strong work ethic tempered with understanding the importance of making time for your loved ones.

Lastly, growing up in the Black Church provided me with a spiritual inheritance I still treasure to this day. From inspiring me to major in Religious Studies at Yale College to how I still prioritize attending weekly church services, my faith undergirds my passion for social justice. Like so many civil rights advocates before me, I draw hope from worshiping a Jesus who partners with us to bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice.

Describe your journey to law school. What motivated you to enroll?

Because of school zoning laws when I finished middle school, I had to leave my predominately Latinx neighborhood in South Gate and attend Jordan High School in Watts, a predominately Black and Brown secondary school named after a racist eugenicist (fortunately, the school was renamed in 2020) that served as a Teach for America volunteer site. Jordan High was only a mile from my home in South Gate. But it was worlds apart. The school experienced contamination by both pollution and violence as we were wedged between an industrial recycling plant, whose toxins spilled over to our high school’s athletic fields, and a public housing project, whose violence spilled over onto our campus and caused lockdowns. I attended school with other Black folks for the first time and I experienced all the ways that poor Black and Brown communities jointly experience systemic inequality. Teachers would sometimes make comments expressing skepticism about our ability to have successful and productive lives. Outdated and tattered textbooks seemingly corroborated these opinions and whispered we were not worthy investments.

This resource scarcity overlapped racial tension between the Black and Latinx community and ubiquitous homophobic bullying. It was this environment of intersectional violence and trauma that motivated me to attend law school. I dreamed of going to law school to learn how to best help solve the tangle of problems in my community that had been generations in the making, resulting in cultures from both within and without that required us to forfeit dignity, safety, and respect. In a society that often ignores people who look and sound like me, I viewed becoming a lawyer as providing me with training and credibility to help cultivate more belonging for communities that had so much promise but also experienced so much neglect.

What was your law school experience like?

My first year of law school I experienced extreme incongruency. On the one hand, I pursued a legal education to help make the world a better place, and yet I spent time focused on learning esoteric legal doctrines that felt disconnected with my goals of becoming a public interest lawyer. Fortunately, I coped with this disorientation through participating in activities and courses that reminded me of why I enrolled in law school in the first place. For example, during 1L, I collaborated with East Bay Sanctuary Covenant and volunteered with the California Asylum Representation Clinic. Under the supervision of an attorney, I represented a Gay Mexican asylum applicant, advocated for him at his hearing and successfully received a grant of asylum. During my 2L year, I participated in Berkeley Law’s International Human Rights Clinic, and I traveled to El Salvador to present at a conference to uplift human rights violations experienced by Salvadorean Transwomen. I enrolled in a class called Race, Sexuality, and the Law, taught by a Black Gay Professor, where we examined how legal doctrine intersected with our various lived experiences and identities.

I know many people think that law school should only focus on doctrinal courses, and I still took many of those, but I also thought it was important to learn about myself and the communities that I wanted to serve when I graduated. There are always opportunities to learn about obscure legal theories in a treatise or on Lexis or Westlaw, but developing cultural competency to advocate for queer communities or communities of color cannot be learned in a legal search engine. In law school I developed skills within the context of advocating for diverse communities and analyzing the law in light of larger social and economic systems. Those are the tools I utilize every day as a civil rights attorney.

Did you know about appellate work in law school? If not, when and how did it first get on your radar and why were you drawn to it?

When I was in law school, appellate work was not on my radar. I first became exposed to appellate law through researching clerkships. I began to see how appellate courts were key to increase belonging in our country for minoritized individuals. I was drawn to appellate work as I began to appreciate the way in which appellate advocacy allows for deep thinking about what rules should govern our society and the ability to communicate to the courts the way in which rules may have implications that can fundamentally shape our society’s values. I know many law students are feeling skeptical about the efficacy of appellate advocacy, given the role that appellate courts have recently played in the erosion of civil rights and civil liberties. However, appellate advocacy is a tool, and like all tools, it can be used for good or evil. My intention has always been to use it for the former. Further, in our legal system, in which the rights of communities of color and the LGBTQ+ community can be denied by legislative bodies, appellate courts still play a crucial role in safeguarding those rights.

Tell us about one of your appellate cases that you found particularly meaningful.

Last year, I co-authored an amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, a case on appeal from the 10th Circuit in which the petitioner sought a First Amendment carve-out to Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act. The petitioner designed websites and wanted an exemption, based on the First Amendment and her freedom of speech, to avoid serving individuals requesting her web design services for same-sex marriages. However, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act is a public accommodation law, and these types of legislation were historically birthed to ensure that Black Americans could have equal access to the marketplace. Despite this racial genesis, no other amicus focused on how a ruling in favor of the petitioner would impact Black LGBTQ+ Americans. In the brief, we cited social science research that demonstrated that Black LGBTQ+ individuals face compounded intersectional discrimination, more than both their Black cisgender heterosexual counterparts and their white LGBTQ+ peers. This case made a lasting impact on me because to this day, when people envision the LGBTQ+ community, they still primarily envision white Americans. This case is an important example of why invisibility is not benign but can lead to harms for Black LGBTQ+ Americans. It is important to create visibility for Black LGBTQ+ Americans as anti-LGBTQ+ precedent and policies will have a disproportionately discriminatory impact on Black communities who already face racial discrimination. 

How often do you encounter other LGBTQ+ attorneys, particularly those of color, in the appellate field? Why do you think that representation is important?

I rarely encounter LGBTQ+ appellate attorneys of color. Lawyers of color are already underrepresented in the legal profession and when you add the intersectionality of focusing on appellate work and being LGBTQ+, it is an even smaller number. But representation in appellate law is important, especially from a civil rights perspective. Appellate courts have increased belonging for minoritized communities in this country through cases like Brown v. Board of Education, Obergefell v. Hodges, and Bostock v. Clayton County. These cases remind me of the civil rights community and their partnership with the appellate community to use the power of law to make legally cognizable the dignity and value of marginalized communities, whether based on racial, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Appellate attorneys who represent the diversity of our country are important in order to effectively communicate information to decision makers. Legislators can hold hearings and conduct investigations. Judges do not generally engage in their own fact-finding but rely on attorneys to advance arguments and present information.

A diverse appellate bar that is representative of the overall population will mean more nuanced, meaningful, and information-rich advocacy to those judges. A Black appellate attorney would likely be able to build stronger rapport with Black voters in Alabama than a white appellate attorney, and so would be able to better understand the voters’ concerns and articulate them to the judge. We need Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous LGBTQ+ appellate lawyers to continue to use our judicial system to create more equity and belonging for communities who have been in America since our founding but have historically been denied inclusion into our social fabric.

What advice would you give to a law student of color who aspires to be where you are now?

During my appellate clerkship, Chief Judge Gregory recounted an anecdote about feeling the sting of implicit bias as a Black lawyer early in his career. At the end of his story, he told me a line that I have never forgot, “Antonio, their assessment does not change your assignment.” As an attorney of color, you will experience both implicit and explicit bias as you practice law. However, we cannot let the perceptions of third parties impede our advocacy and pursuit of justice. Though it will be difficult at times, we have to remind ourselves that we are our ancestors’ wildest dreams. The same legal systems that once subjected our ancestors to genocide, colonialism, and enslavement, we now as lawyers have the ability to confront and shape.

The seat of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is located in Richmond, Virginia and during the Civil War the courthouse building served as offices for Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Yet, in those very halls, I served a brilliant Black judge, who integrated that circuit and who had jurisdiction over states that would have enslaved men who looked like us. I would encourage law students of color to pursue seats at tables that were not constructed with us in mind but that we are qualified to sit at. I would remind them that their skills, their intellects, and their voices are gifts that our profession needs. I would remind them that our country has needs only they can fulfill. I would say persist through the ups and downs and that they will impact their communities for good if they preserve.  

What’s one thing law schools and/or the appellate bar can do to ensure our highest courts are representative of all our communities?

As a first-generation college student and lawyer, I did not really know what appellate law was during law school. Law schools and appellate bars can help host more programs to dispel the myths of appellate law. It is ironic that the appellate bar is deemed elite and still mostly white and straight when so many laws and policies that impact people of color and queer people have come down from appellate courts. Law schools should expose diverse students to appellate law, and the appellate bar should mentor law students so they can see themselves working on appellate issues. I intended to work towards these goals.