Halim Dhanidina

Halim Dhanidina
Judge, Los Angeles County Superior Court
Appointed by	Edmund G. Brown Jr.
Personal details
Born	1970 (age 45–46)

Halim Dhanidina is a judge in the Los Angeles County Superior Court. Appointed to the bench by Governor Jerry Brown in 2012, he is the first Muslim to ever be appointed judge in California.^[1] He is an Ismaili Shiite of Gujarati Indian heritage.^[2][3][4]

Career

Halim Dhanidina was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1970. He was a Deputy District Attorney of Los Angeles County for fourteen years, prosecuting cases for the Hardcore Gang and Major Crimes Divisions. He is also a founding member of the Association of South Asian Prosecutors, and a member of the Asia Pacific American and South Asian Bar Association.^[5]

Prior to becoming a prosecutor, he obtained a Juris Doctorate degree from UCLA School of Law, where he was the co-chair of the Asia Pacific Islander Law Students Association.^[1][6][7] Before that, he completed a B.A. in International Relations at Pomona College, where he founded the Muslim Students Association.^[8]

In April 2016, while dismissing charges of lewd conduct and indecent exposure against a defendant in his court, Judge Dhanidina strongly criticized sting operations by the Long Beach Police Department directed at gay men seeking sex in public places, noting that the sting operations appeared to induce the conduct for which the defendants were then arrested, and that the police apparently did not conduct any similar sting operations directed at heterosexual conduct.^[9]

References

1. "Governor Brown Appoints Eight to Los Angeles County Superior Court" (Press release). Office of Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. 2012-05-18. Retrieved 2012-12-26.
2. Jill Leovy. "Faith informs work of state's first Muslim judge". la times. Retrieved 19 October 2015. His parents left Tanzania for Illinois before he was born. The family is Ismaili, a Shiite tradition that represents a progressive strand within Islam....Their tradition bears little resemblance to the media images of Muslims that bombarded Dhanidina through childhood. The Muslims he knew were "not here to change American society," he said. "They are here to be part of it. They buy in." But Dhanidina, who is of Gujarati Indian heritage, learned early to keep quiet when people talked of Islam. "It was always in a context that would make me defensive," he said.
3. Sunita Sohrabji. "Brown Appoints California's First Muslim Superior Court Judge". indiawest.com. Retrieved 19 October 2015. The Chicago-born, Evanston, Ill.,-raised Dhanidina, whose Gujarati parents Lutaf and Mali emigrated from Tanzania to the U.S., in 1960, said that his 14 years as a deputy district attorney and being in court nearly every day have made him intimately familiar with how a courtroom works, including the rules that govern a trial.
4. "US First Muslim Superior Court Judge". www.onislam.net. Retrieved 20 October 2015. CAIRO – In a major leap for the Muslim minority in the United States, a Muslim attorney was appointed to a California Superior Court judgeship, to be the first Muslim American on a California bench... Born in Chicago, Dhanidina is the son of Gujarati parents who emigrated from Tanzania to the US in 1960. A founding member of the Association of South Asian Prosecutors, Dhanidina spent 14 years as a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney.
5. Website - Asia Pacific American Bar Association
6. "Halim Dhanidina". Whittier Law School. Retrieved 2012-12-26.
7. Sohrabji, Sunita (2012-06-08). "Brown Appoints California's First Muslim Superior Court Judge". IndiaWest.com. Retrieved 2012-12-26.
8. "US First Muslim Superior Court Judge". OnIslam.net. 2012-06-09. Retrieved 2012-12-26.
9. Queally, James (April 29, 2016). "Judge slams gay sex stings by Long Beach police, calling them discriminatory". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2016-04-29.