A pioneering Colorado judge who forged a path for women in the judiciary died Friday.
Zita Weinshienk, 89, died Oct. 7 at home in California after suffering an apparent stroke, her daughter said. Weinshienk was the first woman to become a full-time Denver Municipal Court judge, first woman to be a Denver District Court judge, and the first woman to sit on the federal bench in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.
“She was an absolute trailblazer,” said retired Denver County Court judge Gary Jackson. “I put her right up with Judge Flanigan for being the beginning of diversity in the legal profession.”
Weinshienk, who was also among the first women to attend Harvard Law School where she graduated in 1958, was a brilliant, fair and compassionate judge, Jackson said. She served as a municipal and then county court judge from 1964 to 1971, as a district court judge from 1972 to 1979, and as a federal judge and senior federal judge from 1979 to 2011. She was nominated to the federal bench by President Jimmy Carter.
She was practical on the job, Jackson remembered. When she sentenced people convicted of DUI in Denver County Court, she encouraged them to “go buy a bicycle,” Jackson said. And later, when she took on the job of a federal judge, she mentored Jackson, he said.
“Because she was the only woman over there, and typically I was the only Black man in the courtroom, we had sort of an unspoken alliance,” he said. “When I was over in the federal courthouse, she made it clear that her door was open to me.”
Weinshienk rarely spoke of bias or gender discrimination she faced at work, said her daughter, Kay Weinshienk.
“She was very self-determined,” Kay Weinshienk said. “She didn’t care a lot of what other people had to say about her. Of course, she was driven to do her best, but it was her own self-determination. If someone said, ‘You can’t do it; you’re a woman’ she would say, ‘Watch me.'”
Zita Weinshienk was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame in 2000. She was known as a measured judge, said Charles Goldberg, her former colleague in Denver District Court.
“Everybody was thrilled if their case was assigned to her because they knew they would get a fair shake,” he said. “She ran a tight ship.”
She saw law as the noblest of professions, her daughter said, and sometimes took her work outside the courtroom. Once, in a water rights case, she drove to a remote area of Colorado and hiked several miles to lay eyes on the wetland at the center of the dispute, Kay Weinshienk said.
“She wanted to see with her very own eyes and make a judgment once she really was physically there and could see the wetlands and see the impact that the proposal would have,” Kay Weinshienk said. “She went above and beyond, and that is the way she lived her life. She did everything above and beyond the expectations.”
Zita Weinshienk enjoyed skiing, hiking, birdwatching and spending time with her family. Twice widowed, she is survived by her three daughters, four stepchildren, 19 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren.
One of her grandchildren, Samara Hoose, said her grandmother’s career in the courts inspired her to become an attorney after Hoose’s unconventional childhood with parents who rejected modern society and social structures.
“Grandma was the opposite,” Hoose said. “She worked within the justice system, she could not be more ingrained in the societal structure…She really knew how to communicate in a way that didn’t threaten people or feel like she was pushing anything, but just by doing what she did, through her career, she was radical. So she modeled a different form of effecting radical change.”
