State lawmakers are deciding whether Stratford's Justice Richard Robinson should lead the state's highest court.

Robinson would be the first African-American to be in charge at the Connecticut Supreme Court.

Robinson told lawmakers, "I have been fighting for civil rights and for equality and for people being treated as an individual without discrimination my entire life. That doesn't stop with the fact that I may be the chief justice of the state of Connecticut."

Robinson is Gov. Dan Malloy’s second nominee after his first, Andrew McDonald, who would have been the nation’s first openly gay chief justice, was rejected by lawmakers.