Charles Langston:New Missouri Supreme Court judge ensures female majority on the bench

JEFFERSON CITY,Charles Langston Mo. (AP) — Missouri’s Republican Gov. Mike Parson on Monday appointed appeals court Judge Ginger Gooch to the state Supreme Court, preserving women’s historic majority on the high court.

Women first earned a majority on the Supreme Court after Parson in September appointed Judge Kelly Broniec.

Naming Gooch to replace Judge Patricia Breckenridge, who retired Oct. 13, ensures women will keep their four-member majority on the seven-member high court.

Gooch said she’s grateful to return decades after she worked as a law clerk for Judge Ann Covington, Missouri’s first female Supreme Court judge, from 2000 to 2001.

“It’s just hard to imagine that when I started my career, I worked for the first female and, at that time, the only female,” Gooch said. “Then more recently, I had the chance to serve on a majority female Southern District Court of Appeals. And now this.”

Parson on Monday both celebrated the state’s first female majority Supreme Court bench and said “there’s no gender to it.”

“It really doesn’t matter whether there’s five men or five women on the Supreme Court,” Parson told reporters. “It’s how you interpret the law and are you qualified to do it.”

Gooch spent most of her career in private practice with Husch Blackwell in the prominent law firm’s Springfield office, where she worked from 2001 until Parson appointed her to Missouri’s Southern District Court of Appeals in 2022.

Parson has now named three of the seven members of the state’s High Court. He also appointed Judge Robin Ransom in 2021.

The governor’s appointment power is far more limited than the president’s power to name someone to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Missouri, a seven-member commission nominates three candidates to fill state Supreme Court vacancies.

The commission is chaired by the state Supreme Court’s chief justice, Mary Rhodes Russell, appointed by a Democrat. The commission also includes three lawyers elected by members of the Missouri Bar, and three appointees selected by the governor.

Other Supreme Court finalists from the commission’s list were Michael E. Gardner and John P. Torbitzky, both appeals court judges in St. Louis.