Indian American attorney Navraj Rai, has become the first Sikh to hold the position of a judge pro tem to the Superior Court of California in Kern County. Rai, 32, was sworn in last week with his family by his side.
“At that moment when you see the courtroom kind of flooded, that’s when it hit me, like, OK, I think this moment is bigger than what I realized,” he told local media.
“I think the thing that excites me the most is interacting with the community and kind of making sure that trust and established faith in the system maintains and stays that way,” he said.
Born in Los Angeles to parents who immigrated from India, he attended Stockdale High School and went on to complete his undergraduate degree at the University of California, Davis. He earned his law degree from the University of the Pacific.
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The young judge understands the importance of being the first Sikh to hold the judge pro tem position in Kern County.
“For the local Sikh community and for the global Sikh community, it is a humbling honor to see our first judge pro tem here in the Kern County Superior Court,” Rai was quoted as saying by ABC 23.
“The amount of support that I have received as a result of this has been overwhelming from other countries, other nations, individuals are writing and sending messages and my phone is just blown up like entirely,” Rai said.
A judge pro tem is a private attorney appointed by the court to handle specific cases to relieve overloaded court calendars for quicker resolutions.
During his swearing-in ceremony, Rai said he felt the weight of the moment.
“I was able to look into the audience and I could feel the immense sense of pride that the community had. And I think at that point in time, I finally felt like, okay, this is this moment is bigger than what I thought it was going to be, that this is more of a moment for the community than it is for me,” Rai said.
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Rai’s path to the bench began with a childhood tragedy. He knew he wanted to be an attorney after his parents lost their business.
“It was at that point in time when my parents were giving me these foreclosure notices in the sixth grade and trying to ask me to decipher them, that I realized that I refused to allow this to happen to anybody else. And I think that that’s kind of what catapulted me into making sure that something like this doesn’t ever happen again,” Rai said.
“I think it’s a testament to what’s possible here in Kern County. I mean, in America as a whole, just out in a larger scale. But here in Kern County, to see, I think it demonstrates to the public and to the country that, ‘Hey, the American dream is alive and well here,'” Rai said.