Summit County trails several other urban counties in Ohio in diversity on the bench. Most Ohio counties, however, have no minority representation among judges.
Consider this:
In Summit County, two of the 29 judges (6.9%) are Black. This is less than the number in Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Montgomery and Lucas counties. Cuyahoga has the most, with 19 Black judges out of a total 88 judges (21.6%).
Only nine of Ohio’s 88 counties have any Black judges.
In the Akron area, Medina, Portage, Stark and Wayne counties have no Black judges. Stark County last had a Black judge in the 1990s when Ira Turpin died while serving on the bench.