Arkansas' high courts fall short on representation
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Arkansas has no justices of color on its Supreme Court, though about a third of the state's residents are people of color, per an Axios analysis of new Brennan Center for Justice data.
Why it matters: State high courts shape major decisions on voting, abortion, civil rights and criminal justice, yet their benches often don't reflect the communities they serve.
The caveat: The Brennan Center uses "high court" to mean a court of last resort, not every appellate court.
- One Black man, Judge Waymond Brown, is on the appeals court for District 7.
- Women make up 57% of the state's supreme court.
Zoom out: More than three-quarters of U.S. states — 39 — have a smaller share of justices of color on their high courts than the share of people of color in their population.
- Seventeen states have no high-court justices of color, the Brennan Center notes, and in 11 of those states, people of color make up at least 20% of the population.
Texas has the largest gap: 11% of its high-court justices are people of color, compared with 61% of its population — a 50-percentage-point difference.
- By contrast, Florida's Supreme Court has a 22-point greater share of people of color than the state's population.
The latest: The overall share of state high court seats held by people of color has remained at 21% since the Brennan Center's November 2025 update.
- Since then, 25 justices have joined state high courts. Of those, 84% were white.
The fine print: The Brennan Center's data is a snapshot as of Sept. 8. Race and ethnicity reflect how justices publicly identify, based on Brennan Center research.
- Axios compared the share of a state's Supreme Court justices who are people of color in the state's population, using Census Bureau 2020–2024 American Community Survey estimates.