Appellate Justice Laurie Zelon to retire this month

Justice Laurie D. Zelon will retire at the end of the month after 17 years on the of the 2nd District Court of Appeal.

She cited health issues as the reason for retiring and added she will work remotely through her last day on Aug. 31.

"Although at some point when the court reopens, I will go in and be able to have the time to say goodbye to everybody in person and do those things that you need to do to finish out 17 years in one place," Zelon said in an interview Tuesday.

She was elevated to the appellate court in 2003 by Gov. Gray Davis, who had appointed her to the Los Angeles County Superior Court three years earlier.

Fostering access to justice factored into a major ruling regarding court fees that she wrote last year. Indigent defendants won a major case when the appellate panel reversed a lower court judge's decision to impose $220 in fees on a homeless woman. The appellate panel said using the criminal justice system to collect a fine she could not pay is unconstitutional. People v. Dueñas, 30 Cal. App. 5th 1157 (Cal. App. 2nd Dist. 2019).

"Whatever hardship poverty may cause in the society generally, the judicial process must make itself available to the indigent; it must free itself of sanctions born of financial inability," Zelon wrote in her opinion. She later added that the analysis was grounded in the right of the people to participate in the judicial process.

In 2007, she helped launch a self-help clinic for unrepresented litigants at the Ronald Reagan State Building. Since then, Public Counsel attorneys have helped pro per clients navigate their cases.

"It's hard to understand. There are a lot of rules," Zelon said of appellate cases. "There are a lot of ways which you can fall off the edge because you missed a procedural deadline or didn't understand what needed to be done."

Originally from Durham, North Carolina and graduate of Harvard Law School, Zelon was a partner at Morrison & Foerster.

Looking ahead to retirement, Zelon said she plans to spend time finding ways to volunteer.