New justices confirmed to 3rd and 4th appellate districts

The California appellate courts gained a pair of firsts on Thursday. The Commission on Judicial Appointments confirmed Maurice Sanchez as the first Latino justice of the 4th District Court of Appeal, Division 3, and Laurie M. Earl, the first openly gay justice to serve on the 3rd District Court of Appeal.

Neither decision was in doubt. California Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye opened the hearing by saying, "We'll begin the happy formalities."

Sanchez has been a judge on the Orange County Superior Court since 2018. Before that, he was a partner at three law firms between 1993 and 2018. He's known for representing clients in the automotive industry, and was managing counsel at Mazda Motor of America Inc. from 1991 to 1993.

Division 3 Presiding Justice Kathleen E. O'Leary grew emotional as she testified how Sanchez "overcame some very difficult circumstances in his early life." This included him and his siblings going to live with relatives in order to stay together and out of foster care.

"He is the embodiment of the phrase, 'si se puede,' 'yes we can,'" O'Leary said. "If confirmed, he will become the first person of color to be a justice on the 4th District Court of Appeal, Division 3, in almost 40 years."

O'Leary said Orange County is 35% Latino. Santa Ana, where Division 3 is located, is 77% Latino, but litigants often don't see "justices that look like them." She added, of the five current and 11 former justices since the division was established, all were white.

"None of us was even born in Orange County," she said. "Judge Sanchez was."

Justice Marsha Slough of the 4th District Court of Appeal, Division 2, began Earl's hearing by discussing her work during the financial crisis more than a decade ago. Slough said she first met Earl around 2012. Slough was the presiding judge of the San Bernardino County Superior Court. Earl held the same job in Sacramento County, and chaired the Judicial Council's Trial Court Presiding Judges Committee.

"Back during the Great Recession, there was year after year of statewide budget cuts," Slough recalled. "The cuts to the trial courts were literally strangling many courts, causing courtroom and courthouse closures and the need to lay off court employees -- This time also served to cast a very bright spotlight on the fact the historical formula to allocate the state money to the individual courts was greatly disparate and needed to be addressed."

Slough said despite tensions and opposition, Earl led the effort to change the funding formula to the current model.

"The initiative went forward and was successful because of Judge Earl," Slough said, adding, "She led the charge with what I call an iron fist covered in a silk glove."

Attorney General Rob Bonta asked Earl about her decision early in her career to leave the Sacramento County public defender's office to become a deputy district attorney. She said the decision upset some of her colleagues, but it gave her a chance to bring a different perspective to the job.

"As a criminal district attorney, I recognized the person on the other end of the table as opposed to the bad guy on the other side," Earl said. "I think that served me as a trial judge as well."

Earl also told the story of her marriage to her longtime partner, with whom she raised two boys.

"I look forward to the day when the story is not about the first, because we've exhausted the firsts -- I look forward to the day when the story is about the person, and the afterthought is about their ethnicity or their sexual identity," Earl said. "But for today I will live in the glow of being first."

Both new justices are in their 60s, older than many recent appellate nominees. This may reflect a desire on Gov. Gavin Newsom's part to get experienced judges into an overburdened appellate system dealing with pandemic-related backlogs. The 3rd District has been plagued with complaints about long decision times, an assessment backed up by the Judicial Council's own data in recent annual reports.