Monica Márquez, the new chief justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, sat down with The Denver Post last week, days after she was sworn in, to discuss her vision for the state Judicial Department as it emerges from a turbulent few years.

Márquez took the helm of the Supreme Court from Justice Brian Boatright as part of a new system in which the chief justice role will rotate among the justices every three years.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: How are you feeling as you take on the chief justice role?

One of the beauties of taking over at this time is that we’ve had this formal onboarding process that has gone on for the last year. I’m super grateful for that opportunity because it’s given me a chance to shadow the chief, to sit in on a lot of meetings, to undergo a series of HR trainings, management trainings, get to know key constituencies across the state. It’s left me probably better prepared than any chief in recent history.

That’s one of the many major shifts that we’ve made in the last handful of years. So I feel lucky. Obviously, there’s a difference between riding in the front passenger seat and taking over the wheel. I’m now taking over the wheel, but I have looked out the front windshield. I know generally the layout of the vehicle and what the controls do. But steering from here will be its own interesting ride.

Q: What are your thoughts on being the first Latina, first openly gay person to take on this role?

I have been out for 30-plus years, but I also want to be clear that I do not claim to be the first openly LGBT justice, and I never have done that. I think others have ascribed that to me, but I have never claimed that. I leave it to other people to tell their stories. That’s just being a respectful member of the LGBT community.

Over the last almost 14 years, I have been invited by so many community groups to come share my journey and my story. That’s kind of what happens when you’re the young, gay, Catholic Latina from the Western Slope. All the groups want to hear you speak. And I have been reminded over and over again in those face-to-face encounters just how meaningful my appointment has been to so many of those communities, just to have someone who represents some piece of them in this role.

And that’s been a very powerful reminder to me of two things. One: I stand on others’ shoulders. I sure didn’t get here by myself. Many other people paved the way.

And second, I am reminded that I carry a lot of hopes and dreams of others. And so it’s an added responsibility, which I feel the weight of every day. And the third thing is, at the same time, as a justice, my job is to be neutral and impartial. I don’t represent specific constituencies. I come with that life experience, and that adds a lens to our conversations, but all six of my colleagues bring their life experience as well, and it’s that collective life experience that results in wiser decisions.

Q: The last few years for the Colorado Judicial Department have been rough, between the blackmail allegations, the public censure of former Chief Justice Nathan Coats and allegations of harassment and mistreatment of women in the branch. What lessons were learned?

I’m very proud of Justice Boatright’s leadership through all of that, because it has been rough waters, no question.

Collectively we have learned a lot. He tasked me with taking the recommendations from those reports and moving forward with trying to improve our workplace culture. That has been a really exciting opportunity, honestly, because it’s a chance to change and do better. It’s a chance to figure out where we had gone wrong and ways we could rebuild stronger and better.

A couple of things have happened in that time frame. We’ve had enormous turnover across the branch at all levels. Something like 40% of our judges have turned over in the last four or five years. And close to 50% of our two core workforce job classes — our court judicial clerks and our probation officer community. A huge swath of our workforce have no connection to those allegations and, frankly, don’t care. They just want to get their jobs done and be well-resourced, supported and moving forward, and that has been my mindset.

We started our workplace culture initiative, we’ve gotten quite a bit done in the first two years. I’m passing the baton, and the leadership of that to Justice (Melissa) Hart as we move forward, but we’ve made a lot of great initial changes. We have developed a mission statement, a vision statement, value statements and are in the process of rolling that out across the branch.

…We started with listening tours around the state. All seven justices split up the state and went out and met face-to-face with employees to hear from them. And it was interesting. I think we were prepared to have really hard conversations about all the allegations. And there were some, but by and large, as I said, because of all of this turnover in the branch, people are much more focused on — what do you call it — keeping the trains running on time. Making sure that they have the resources they need to do their jobs well. The big feedback we got was around compensation. It was around training and well-being. And we used that collective feedback from around the state to develop priorities.

Q: What are you seeing as the challenges coming up for the department?

The external challenges are legion. We’re experiencing positives and negatives with the shift to virtual court. Positives have been greater access to justice. I think we’ve seen many more people able to dial in, avoid getting failure-to-appear warrants, arrests.

So it has been very positive in that regard. The challenges have been some of the technical pieces. We’ve recently had a spate of what would appear to be coordinated attacks in virtual courtrooms where disruptors come in and post and run really profane, obscene and often racist comments. Just purely with the intent to disrupt proceedings.

So our IT team and judges are working on ways to navigate that, but I think ultimately it’s going to be we need to have a (different) platform. We are working with a platform that was never designed to be a virtual court system. And so we’ve got to figure out a way — because I think people are excited about providing that service, but we have some kinks to work out.

Q: Many people lost confidence in the justice system around the time of George Floyd’s murder. At the same time in Colorado, the courts were dealing with the blackmail allegations. What would you say to the skeptical Colorado resident who is still reeling from that? Why should they have confidence in the system?

I have been so impressed in my travels around the state with the dedication and commitment to excellence of all of our employees. We are very mission-oriented group of people and we just continue to show up each day. I recognize that it takes time to earn people’s trust. We have to demonstrate that with steady leadership and policies.

All seven justices are fully on board with this vision. Everyone’s working hard. I’m excited. I’m also very sober about the fact that this will be a challenging road.

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Originally Published: August 5, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.