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Joan Dempsey Klein, a celebrated champion of ladies’s rights and the primary lady to grow to be presiding choose of a California appellate court docket, died in her sleep at her house in Santa Monica on Christmas Eve. She was 96.
“She was definitely a self-made woman, quite ahead of her times, who pushed the barriers of what was possible for women at the time and always made sure to bring others along with her,” the justice’s stepdaughter, Karen Klein, wrote to The Times in an electronic mail.
The National Assn. for Women Judges, a company co-founded by Justice Klein in 1979, described the late choose who served 36 years in Division 3 of the 2nd District Court of Appeal as a “trailblazer, giant, mentor, founding mother” and “a pioneer in the struggle to achieve equal opportunity for women in the law.”
A fifth-generation Californian, Klein earned a bachelor’s diploma from San Diego State, the place she swam and performed volleyball. After graduating, she joined the touring aquatic efficiency present Buster Crabbe’s Aqua-Parade and was a part of a synchronized-swimming troupe that toured Europe in 1950.
When she returned to the U.S., she was awarded a one-year fellowship at UCLA, the place, as a feminine athlete, she was inspired to review bodily training.
Klein determined to review legislation as an alternative. She paid her personal manner by legislation faculty by working part-time jobs. By the time she accomplished her diploma in 1955, she was married and had two sons.
She labored as a state deputy lawyer normal in L.A. in 1956, the place she met her second husband, Conrad Klein. The two had been married in 1963, the identical yr Gov. Edmund “Pat” Brown appointed her to the Los Angeles Municipal Court, making her the primary graduate of UCLA Law School to grow to be a choose. She quickly grew to become presiding choose of the Municipal Court, the place her accomplishments included supporting the primary detoxing heart for alcoholics.
She co-founded the California Women Lawyers Assn. in 1974 and was elected Judge on the L.A. Superior Court in 1975.
Four years later, she and her bench mate and buddy Justice Vaino Spencer fashioned the National Assn. of Women Judges to advertise the growing variety of ladies on the judiciary and to handle the gender bias skilled by the few feminine justices on the time.
Klein served a complete of fifty years as a choose in California and wrote greater than 500 judicial opinions. She testified earlier than the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf of Sandra Day O’Connor’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court and met with Bill Clinton on the White House. She additionally traveled throughout the globe, representing ladies within the American judiciary, mentored many younger ladies domestically and was honored with dozens of awards, together with the lady of the yr award from the L.A. Times in 1975.
She retired from the bench on the finish of 2014, on the age of 90.
“She impressed all she met,” her stepdaughter mentioned. In a telephone interview Sunday, Klein additionally described her “second mom” as “vibrant, very high-energy — she had a big voice and was incredibly frank and fun to talk with. She was always a straight shooter. She wanted to know everything going on about politics and the law and would watch all the news shows, but once in a while, we’d get her to watch a nature show just to change the topic. She really cared about animals.”
The oldest of 5 kids in a blended household, Klein remembers a childhood spent in a yard graced with a tennis court docket and pool. She and her siblings and their dad and mom would usually play or swim, wrapping up the day with a barbecue. The children usually invited pals to return over, and the choose “would sit them right down and say, ‘What are your life goals?’”
“We didn’t do small talk. She’d ask them: ‘What do you think of the president? Do you think women can be president?’ She wanted the boys and girls, especially the girls, to know that they could be all they wanted to be,” Klein mentioned, including that her stepmom can be “hanging out with us in her bathing suit or her sweats, which women didn’t wear to hang out in the ’60s. She was forward-thinking.”
After the choose’s retirement, following a knee transplant, she would proceed to stroll from her house close to the seashore to Santa Monica Pier, observing “runners, bikers and all forms of life to help keep up with life,” her stepdaughter recalled.
Colleagues described the previous justice as “phenomenal, a powerhouse.”
“She was very devoted to eliminating sexism for women in the law,” mentioned Judith McConnell, administrative presiding justice for the Court of Appeal, 4th Appellate District, primarily based in San Diego.
One instance is the time Klein drove from Los Angeles to San Diego to provide “a high-spirited speech” to a bunch of individuals, encouraging them to type what would grow to be the Lawyers Club, a feminist bar affiliation, within the early ’70s. She delivered the same speak in Tennessee, McConnell mentioned, sharing her beliefs “that women all around the nation should be more visible.”
Klein fought for the rights of ladies to open financial institution accounts or purchase shares in their very own identify, with out having to ask their husbands or fathers for permission as required by legislation in earlier many years. “It was fun to watch her on the bench. She had a deep voice and a quite direct way of asking questions,” McConnell mentioned, having witnessed her buddy assist preside over affirmation hearings for California Supreme Court justices, together with Goodwin Liu and Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye.
Klein is survived by her 5 kids, together with Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Marc Dempsey Gross, Susan Bruin, Brad Gross and Amy Millard; together with eight grandchildren, two of whom are legal professionals.
Due to the coronavirus, the household is not going to be holding a public memorial and can as an alternative collect with shut members of the family when it’s protected to take action.
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