Martin J. Jenkins, a former NFL defensive back, prosecutor, civil rights attorney, youth group mentor and award-winning public servant, was sworn in as the newest Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court last week. He is also openly gay and black, but there’s really no reason to focus on those classifications.

Instead, as Governor Gavin Newsom said during the COVID-19-caused virtual swearing-in ceremony on December 4, the real news should be about his distinguished career and character. Newsom described him as an “extraordinary Californian” and noted, “The people of our state could not ask for a finer jurist or better person.”

Jenkins, 67, will fill the vacancy created when Justice Ming Chin retired in August. He will be the third black justice to serve on the already diverse court that reflects the diversity of the nation’s most populous state. His nomination was approved by the Commission on Judicial Appointments on November 6, which highly recommended him, while praising his “compassion, humility, lifelong commitment to public service and passion for justice (making) him a most deserving and worthy addition to the state’s highest court.”

He will be the first openly gay justice, the third African American man, and the fifth African American person to serve on the California Supreme Court.

Jenkins has had a lengthy and varied career. A San Francisco native and the son of a janitor, he graduated from Santa Clara University in 1977 and briefly played as a defensive back with the Seattle Seahawks. In a profile in the University of San Francisco (USF) Law School magazine, he “discovered that getting burned by wide receivers and crushed by running backs wasn’t much fun.” He also told them “if I furthered my education, I could give back.” He enrolled in law school the following year.

He began his legal career as a prosecutor in Alameda county, then moved to the U.S. Department of Justice where he worked in the Civil Rights Division-Criminal Section as a trial attorney, prosecuting police misconduct cases, as well as Ku Klux Klan members and others accused of racial violence.

In 1986, when his mother grew ill, he returned home to San Francisco and worked as a trial attorney in the legal department of Pacific Bell. Three years later, Republican Governor George Deukmejian appointed Jenkins, a Democrat, to the Oakland Municipal Court. Then, in 1992, Gov. Pete Wilson nominated him to join the Alameda County Superior Court where he became Presiding Judge of the Juvenile Division.

President Clinton appointed him to the federal bench in 1998, and he was appointed to the California Court of Appeals by another Republican, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, in 2008. Last year he retired to join the Newsom administration as judicial appointments secretary.

Jenkins was keenly aware of the disparity between his career and that of many others who grew up in his Bay Area neighborhood. He had been interested in the law for many years before starting law school, ever since a USF alum took his mother’s case without charge after she had been injured in an accident. He told the USF School of Law alumni magazine that the School helped him attend as part of its Academic Support Program. He praised “a safety blanket” that provided academic and emotional support. He also credited the dean of students at Santa Clara College who was impressed by his leadership skills and told his football coach that Jenkins’ talents would serve him well in law. Pat Malley, his coach, then introduced him to three black lawyers “who told me the impact I could make on the community.

“I always worked hard but I was not confident,” says Jenkins. “My father was a janitor for 40 years at Coit Tower. My mother was a nurse by trade but didn’t work outside the home when I was growing up. I didn’t know lawyers. I was concerned it was beyond me.” Clearly, it wasn’t.

Former Dean Jeffrey Brand, now a superior court judge, recalled Jenkins’ early days in law school. “At the beginning he had so many self-doubts, but they were misplaced. The community he has so tirelessly served for so long needed him more than the NFL.”

Throughout his tenure on the court, Jenkins always made time to give back to his community, to pay forward what had been paid to him. He stayed involved in many Bay Area organizations that served community youth and he even refereed at high school and college football games. He often volunteered to feed the homeless and has been known to give his own shoes to a less fortunate man who asked for them.

Jenkins works with the youth group at St. Patrick’s Church in Oakland, helped start a K-5 charter school in West Oakland, and serves as a mentor with San Francisco Achievers, a mentoring program for black male high school students. He regularly speaks at inner-city high and middle schools “about the notion of achievement and impediments.” In recognition of his dedication to his community, he was awarded the St. Thomas More Award by the St. Thomas More Society of San Francisco, an organization of Catholic lawyers and judges.

Saundra Brown Armstrong, a federal district court judge in the Northern District of California, who has known Jenkins since his first days at USF said, “He serves as a role model and a mentor, which, I think, he sees as the most important role that he fills.” Armstrong called him “a thinking judge (who) presides and decides in an open-minded, even-tempered, courteous, patient, and compassionate manner. He has no personal interest or ego investment in any of the decisions — they’re based precisely on his view of the law and the facts. What’s important to him is achieving results that are just. That’s the quality of an excellent judge.”

Fellow classmate Justice Carol Corrigan told the USF Alumni Magazine, "He's smart, he's gifted, he has tremendous compassion. If you look up federal judge in the dictionary, he's the picture you want to find."