One Texas Judge Wants Children and Families Better Served by a State Too Often Leaving Them Behind [imprintnews.org]

By Sandy West, Photo: Cindy Elizabeth, The Imprint, June 23, 2022

There is a sense of serendipity for Travis County Judge Aurora Martinez Jones, as she presides over the Texas courtroom where a history-making lawsuit in the 1940s helped bring an end to legal segregation. Today, she is the first Black woman to preside over the 126th District Court, and the first judge to oversee a docket fully devoted to the region’s struggling children and families.

Communities battered by poverty, addiction, poor health care and domestic violence are too often failed by Child Protective Services in Texas, where Martinez Jones is determined to find solutions.

“When you have the opportunity to intervene in a family’s life, especially a family that is ripe to be poised as the victim of inequitable systems, you have to do something different to prevent the path that a lot of racist systems have built,” Martinez Jones told The Imprint. “My hope, especially for the children, is to dramatically and impactfully change the trajectory, so that we don’t end up in the statistics.”

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