(Photo via Temika Hampton-Johnson’s website)
ORLANDO | As a dedicated attorney, public servant and community advocate, Temika Hampton-Johnson decided it was time to create the change she wants to see.
In her run for Ninth Circuit Judge, Group 1, she wants to ensure that every person who enters the courtroom is treated with dignity and receives equal justice under the law.
As a former full-time single mom and someone who experienced firsthand the harm caused by unjust adoption laws, Hampton-Johnson understands how legal systems can impact families in profound and personal ways.
She says it’s important to have that representation because she was impacted when she couldn’t adopt one of her sons due to a Florida statute that prevented gay people from adopting. The 1977 Florida law that banned gay and lesbian individuals from adopting children was ruled unconstitutional in 2010 and officially repealed by the state legislature in 2015.
“When you’re in court, you don’t necessarily have a judge who can relate and understand that, and the impact, so I think it’s important that we have that representation there,” Hampton-Johnson shares.
Hampton-Johnson’s career has spanned courtrooms, boardrooms and community meeting halls. She was also a military police officer and probation officer, who saw the system from the inside. She later became a lawyer and an advocate for the public.
As a community and labor lawyer, she would advocate for fair treatment and safe workplaces. She would also work on advocating for equitable collective bargaining rights for over 20,000 Orange County teachers, nurses, bus drivers, custodians, food-service workers, and other education professionals.
In today’s political climate, Hampton-Johnson says qualifying for the ballot was a feeling she can’t describe.
“To know that I can walk in and vote for myself… I can’t even describe how that’s going to feel, I can try to imagine it, but I’m not sure until it actually happens,” Hampton-Johnson says. “But in our 250th year of the United States, that an openly gay woman can walk in and vote for herself to be a judge. I don’t even have the words.”
When it comes to courtroom decisions and the impact they have, she says she understands how they ripple through families, workplaces and communities.
For more information, visit HamptonJohnson4Judge.Vote.
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