Bias, of all kinds, is all over the news today, and as our broader society struggles to address bias, the judicial system has too. Steps have been taken to address, and attempt to eliminate, bias at different stages of litigation, by different participants, in both civil and criminal litigation.

The practice of some prosecutors to exclude jurors based on race led the U.S. Supreme Court in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), to bar race-based peremptory jury challenges. The late Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam noted in the New York Court of Appeals’ decision in People v. Bridgeforth, 28 N.Y.3d 567, 571 (2016), “[w]e recognize the existence of discrimination on the basis of one’s skin color, and acknowledge that under this State’s Constitution and Civil Rights Law, color is a classification upon which a Batson challenge may be lodged.” Batson’s holding has been expanded to bar exclusion based on “the basis of race, gender or any other status that implicates equal protection concerns.” Id.