SACRAMENTO – Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today released annual applicant and appointee data for his administration’s first year of judicial appointments.
Under SB 56, signed in 2006, the Governor is required to disclose aggregate statewide demographic data provided by all judicial applicants relative to ethnicity and gender each year by March 1.
In 2011, there were a total of 768 judicial appointment applicants. Women accounted for 32% of the applicant pool and 33% of Governor Brown’s judicial appointments. Nearly one-third of the applicant pool identified themselves as American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian; Black or African-American; Hispanic; Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; or Other/Unknown and more than half (53%) of Governor Brown’s appointees were from these groups.
Governor Brown’s judicial appointees included a number of notable minority judges, including Goodwin Liu, appointed to the California Supreme Court; Kathleen O’Leary, the first female presiding justice in the history of the Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division Three; and Raquel Marquez, the first Latina judge in the history of the Riverside County Superior Court.
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**NOTE: Judge and Justice demographic data collected by the Judicial Council of California, Administrative Office of the Courts. State Bar membership data collected by the California State Bar.