[1] In January 2021, Lewis took the bench to serve as the Division B 40th District Court judge, in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana.

Lewis is a tenured associate professor, with joint appointments in the English Department and Africana Studies Program, at Tulane University.

[13] Lewis said, "Entry points for discussion differed, with Peele's cinematic vision, calls-and-responses to Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby and Stepford Wives, and genre-bending emerging centrally in my African American Literature course, and modalities of white privilege, white power, and black racial injustice shaping engagement in my Introduction to Africana Studies course.

"[14] Lewis began her legal career clerking for Judge Mary Hotard Becnel in Division B of the 40th Judicial District Court.

[17] Under the Louisiana majority-vote system, also known as a jungle primary, a candidate needs to win a simple majority of all votes cast for the office in October.

[20] The exception to Louisiana's mostly white and male bench is Orleans Parish, without which the state's racial and gender disparity would be much greater.

[22] In 2016, Lewis ran in the general election for the 40th Judicial District Division B seat, which oversees civil, criminal, traffic, juvenile and family cases in St. John the Baptist Parish.

[30] Perilloux's name was unable to be removed from the ballot because his conviction and resignation from the bench occurred after the candidacy period challenge ended.

[34] In January 2023, Lewis helped launch a pilot program, "Respect is Just a Minimum" geared toward St. John the Baptist youth in grades 7 through 12.

[35] Lewis said that the program grew out of a "need to uplift young people who have tremendous potential to be successful but lack the proper support.

"[35] The program is funded through a $119,000 grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice awarded to the 40th Judicial District Court and will offer ten weekly sessions related to financial literacy, conflict resolution, healthy competency and empathic understanding.

[36] In November 2023, Lewis ordered the St. John the Baptist Planning Commission to halt any rezoning of residential land where a company is trying to build a grain terminal.

[37] Lewis issued a preliminary injunction against Greenfield Louisiana, and granted a restraining order to the Descendants Project, an activist group founded by twin sisters Jocyntia and Joyceia Banner.

[38] The Descendants Project originally sued to overturn the 1990 zoning change in 2021, attempting to block the construction of a 222-acre grain terminal complex in the predominantly black community of Wallace on the West Bank.

[41] In the order's notes, Lewis said the content of the parish's rezoning application, which used 1990s zoning maps and marked residential land as agricultural, was "at best, incomplete, and, at wors[t], dissembling.

"[42] The Banner sisters are leading an effort to overturn decades-old zoning changes that allow heavy industries to locate next to neighborhoods.