California Gains Nation's First Hmong Judge

http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/tcrmag/2014/04/2014-04-18c-tcrmag.mp3

As he orders lunch at Sam Cafe in Merced, Paul Lo seems like just a regular guy.

“I’ll just get a lath nah combo. I’ll get a Thai lemonade, too. Thanks”

Except that he’s a trailblazer in his community, the nation’s first Hmong judge.

He tells the owner, Sam Malaythong, he expects a large crowd this Friday at his swearing-in to the Merced County Superior Court.

“We’re going to have a big party,” Lo says.

“Music, entertainment, food?” asks Malaythong.

“You can sing if you want,” Lo says.

“I don’t want to chase everybody away in the courtroom!” replies Malaythong to Lo’s laughter.

Lo says his appointment is an affirmation of those who sacrificed so much to see their children succeed.

“In the Hmong community, the expression is loosely translated into English to say that we have face,” he says.

Or a sense of pride and equality. It’s been hard won. Like other Hmong refugees, Lo’s father fought for the United States in the secret war in Laos. When the country fell under Communist rule, the family fled on foot to Thailand, where they spent four years in a crowded refugee camp. They came to the U.S. in 1979, first to Denver, where Lo’s fifth-grade teacher stuck him in a corner with a coloring book.

“I still remember the shame and the perception, the self-perception that you’re not adequate, not smart enough and you don’t belong,” Lo says.

That shame drove Lo to excel in ESL classes when the family moved to Stockton two years later. By high school, he was taking advanced placement English. He went to UC Davis and then to law school at UCLA. A law firm in Merced offered him a job.

“When I passed the California bar, I was the first attorney of Hmong descent to practice in California,” Lo says.

That was in 1994. Eventually, Lo established his own practice. His clientele consisted primarily of Hmong in the Central Valley. He became, in effect, a cultural broker. For example, families got in trouble for their religious practices, which involved the slaughter of pigs or chickens.

“They would bring those to their homes in the city limits. They would slaughter or kill them in their front yard or the entrance to their door because that’s part of the ritual, and they were cited for those things,” says Lo.

“It was a tremendous insult to many of these families because they had a sincere religious belief and they felt they couldn’t practice their religion.”

There were other traditional practices to reconcile with the courts.

“The parents would marry off the daughters who are under 18, minor daughters. And it’s a cultural practice, early marriages,” he says.

The groom would be cited for statutory rape. Most of the time, Lo says, they were able to plead out, but on a couple of occasions the groom was convicted and registered as a sex offender. One young man had a short stint in prison.

Lo says he sometimes felt frustrated because he couldn’t always help the Hmong with their issues. But when he was able to solve a problem, it was tremendously gratifying.

“Their problems are magnified because of the language issue and the lack of understanding of the legal system,” Lo says

Palee Moua understands the cultural divide. She has been a medical interpreter at Mercy Hospital in Merced for 39 years. Mercy is the setting for the prize-winning book, "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down," by Anne Fadiman. The collision of cultures described in the book, says Moua, is one reason why interpretation, not just translation, is paramount. One word in English might lend itself to several sentences in Hmong.

“That is the big misconception. A person like Paul who is bilingual, they do understand much better than a person who is monolingual,” says Moua.

Pahoua Lor, a private attorney in Fresno, says the Hmong typically distrust the judicial route and try to solve issues through a clan system.

“The clan will go back and forth and act as a mediator,” she says. “And so, often, if that doesn’t work out, and there are children involved and there are custody issues, that’s when two parties look to the judicial system. But it usually always starts with the clan system first.”

But the Hmong are starting to see the importance of paperwork, and that means lawyers and sometimes judges, Lor says.

“The nice wonderful thing about having Judge Lo on the bench is that he understands that, he understands that the Hmong community lives together in extended families. He understands the blended dynamics of how we do things in the community,” she says.

It’s also exciting for the community at large, Lor says. When she thinks of equality and justice for all, she thinks of Paul Lo, and for that reason, she says, his judgeship will serve everyone, not just the Hmong.