Brooklyn has a new slate of nominated justices for the upcoming New York State Supreme Court races in November’s general election. Of the nine candidates, four are decorated Black women judges.
Nearly 150 delegates gathered at the 2025 Kings County Judicial Convention on August 7 to nominate Supreme Court candidates.
Here are the four Black women in the running this year for a spot on the the New York Supreme Court 2nd Judicial District.
Judge Derefim B. Neckles — Born and raised in Grenada, she earned her bachelor’s degree from Brooklyn College and her Juris Doctor degree from the Miami School of Law in the U.S. She is an acting justice of the Supreme Court in Kings County, where she handles foreclosure cases, tax liens, jury trials, and arraignments. For the last four years, she served in Criminal and Civil Courts in Brooklyn. Earlier in her career, she practiced civil rights, housing, and employment law.
Judge Claudia Daniels-DePeyster — Raised by Guyanese parents, she graduated from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo and received her law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was a solo practitioner with a concentration in criminal and civil law, an attorney with the Bureau of Investigations and Trials of the New York City Fire Department, and assistant deputy commissioner of trials with the NYPD for 11 years. She was appointed to the county’s Criminal Court in April 2015. She is a lifelong member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.
Judge Norma Jean Jennings — Raised in public housing by a single mother, Jennings became the first in her family to attend college, matriculating from the Columbia Law School. She is the first openly LGBTQ+ Black elected judge in all of Brooklyn. She is also a former Housing Court supervising judge, community advocate, and proud wife and mother. She was elected as a Kings County Civil Court judge in 2024.
Judge Jacqueline D. Williams — Born at an Air Force base in California, she grew up with her family in East New York. Williams is an Afro-Latina jurist, proudly rooted in her Panamanian heritage. She earned her bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University, her Juris Doctor from the UC Berkeley School of Law, and her master’s in hospitality management from Cornell University. She serves as an acting Supreme Court justice and Family Court judge in Kings County.
The full slate of nominees also includes Judges Jill R. Epstein, Maria Aragona, Brian L. Gotlieb, J.C.C., Betsy Barros, and Carl Landicino.
Judicial seats tend to be open every year, but judicial races are not the same as political elections for other citywide or county offices. Candidates running cannot ask for or accept campaign contributions, make fancy promises, or be involved in politics (except for a specific period of time during the race). Political parties can use closed-off screening committees to evaluate candidates, fundraising goes through committees, and there is no public financing program as there is for city offices.
To run for a judgeship, candidates must be licensed to practice law in New York for at least 10 years. If elected, they serve 14-year terms or until they reach the 70-year age limit.
“Very often, we don’t get a chance to select who is going to be representing us in the court system, but when we do have an opportunity, we need to be involved, we need to vote,” said Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, chair of the Brooklyn Democratic Party and the Executive Committee of the Kings County Democratic County Committee, at the judicial Supreme Court forum. “We need to ask our nominees or candidates what they stand for.”
New York City voters play a role in electing the delegates of a political party, who then go on to attend a judicial nominating convention and select the party’s candidates for Supreme Court. Voters also vote for the nominated candidates that appear on the back of the ballot in November’s general election.
Bichotte Hermelyn is currently pushing legislation, Assembly Bill A7163, that reforms the election and petitioning process for housing court judges in particular. She said it is imperative that the community is involved in selecting who presides over homeowner, tenant, and property issues.