Quinn Wilson in Bloomberg Law has “Newsom’s Delay on Filling California High Court Seat: Explained.” I’m among those quoted with speculation on why the vacancy created by Justice Jenkins’s October 2025 retirement is taking so long to fill and who might be appointed. The article says “[i]t’s the third longest Supreme Court opening the state has seen in modern times.”
Governor Newsom’s extended delay indicates that he might make a Joshua-Groban-type appointment. In November 2018, as his last term neared its end, Governor Jerry Brown named Groban to the court, some 20 months after Justice Kathryn Werdegar announced her retirement and almost 15 months after she left the court. The probable reason for the extended wait was to allow Groban, then a senior advisor to Brown on judicial appointments and legal affairs, to continue his work in the administration for as long as possible. Newsom might similarly be waiting to squeeze the last drop of service from a senior lawyer on his staff before appointing that person to the court.
I had originally agreed with others that Newsom was likely to appoint a sitting Court of Appeal justice, possibly one of the two who had previously served in his administration. But if that was the Governor’s intention, why would he be waiting so long to do so? Well, there is one possible reason.
If Newsom waits until after mid-August to appoint Jenkins’s successor, the new justice probably wouldn’t face the voters at this November’s election, and would not be on the ballot until November 2030. (See here and here.) This is true whether the appointee is currently on the Court of Appeal, on the Governor’s staff, or neither. Newsom has delayed another justice’s appearance on the ballot in the past. (See here.)
Related:
The effects of a prolonged Supreme Court vacancy, and whom might the new justice eventually be
“Newsom pick could shift balance in criminal cases on California Supreme Court”
“2028 ambitions loom over Newsom’s next state Supreme Court pick”
