AUSTIN (KXAN) — The Austin Under 40 Awards named judge and community organizer Denise Hernandez the 2024 Austinite of the Year.
Hernandez is the presiding judge of County Court at Law #6 in Travis County where she leads the Transformative Youth Justice program, a youth diversion initiative offering holistic, community-centered support for young people in the justice system.
Judges selected Hernandez as the Austinite of the Year over hundreds of nominees and 45 finalists.
Hernandez talked with KXAN’s Tom Miller about her work in the courtroom and her connection to the city she calls home.
Tom Miller: First, congratulations. The awards committee recognized your youth diversion program called Transformative Youth Justice. What is that, and how does it work?
Judge Hernandez: Transformative Youth Justice is a youth diversion program for individuals between the ages of 17 to 20. In the state of Texas, 17-year-olds are considered adults within the criminal justice system. The goal of the program is truly to connect participants to community resources to address their social needs, to mentorship, but most importantly to begin to address issues that may have led them to the court system in the first place. We do that in partnership with a lot of people, including the county attorney’s office, which is in agreement to enter these folks into the program, but most importantly, to do that with the opportunity of a dismissal at the end of the program. The unique thing about the program is that we don’t hold it in the courtroom, and that was intentional. We wanted to be very trauma-informed and aware of the harm that could happen in a courtroom. We actually hold our monthly meetings, our monthly dockets at the Long Center. We bring speakers who talk about what it means to go back to school, maybe changing your life with starting a business, really just trying to inspire our participants to take a necessary step forward in their life that will help transform the direction that they’re going.
Tom: The awards committee also honored you and talked about you for increasing fair access to the courtroom. Can you talk about that concept and what that means to you?
Hernandez: I grew up system-impacted. A lot of people in my family are formerly incarcerated. I watched my parents navigate the courtroom at a very young age, and unfortunately, watch them be negatively impacted by how the judge treated them in that courtroom. Very early on in my career, I noticed I really want to be trauma-informed about how I interact with people in the courtroom. So the way I increase fair access is I acknowledge the harm that happens in a courtroom, the trauma that is often triggered in a courtroom. I check in with them, I see how they’re doing. I ask, ‘how’s your living situation? Do you have any issues with food access?’ I’m really trying to problem-solve other areas that may come up outside of just the legal problem, and that is about seeing people and their wholeness and honoring their human dignity. Some other ways that I work on increasing fair access in the courtroom is being LGBTQ-inclusive. In my courtroom there are signs that say, we will honor your pronouns, we will honor the name that you want to go by, and we will honor any gender-neutral language that you want us to use in the space, and that is on purpose. We want the courtroom to be available and accessible to everybody, including our LGBTQ+ community.
Tom: With that in mind, have you noticed that makes a difference for the people in court?
Hernandez: I’ve received a lot of comments from folks saying, ‘You know Judge, I was a little hesitant about approaching the bench, and I was scared about what this would be like, and you help calm me down.’ I’ve had people who identify as LGBTQ, really thank me for the signs, really taking a moment to honor who they are in that moment. That is our role as judicial leaders, to serve the community. The way that we do that is we have to honor where people are at, we have to honor their experiences and ensure that they feel like they’re receiving justice in a courtroom.
Tom: You earned this title of Austenite of the Year over hundreds of nominees and 45 finalists. What does Austin mean to you and what’s the future look like?
Hernandez: I moved to Austin from Lubbock. I was at Texas Tech for law school. That’s where I met my wife. It was really hard living in Lubbock. I couldn’t be out in that space because there was a lot of backlash for being queer. I interned in Austin one summer and it was the first time that I saw LGBTQ couples being themselves, being accepted. I knew very quickly that I wanted to move here. So when I moved here this became a city of me being honored in my wholeness, where I could be my true authentic self. It was the first space where I could talk openly about my relationships. I could talk openly about issues that were coming up for me as a queer woman. It was a city of opportunity where I could not just show up in my queerness, but also in my Latina identity and my intersectional identity and be accepted.
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