SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) – Outgoing California Governor Jerry Brown filed 13 Superior Court judgeships Friday.
Appointees include the first Korean-American judge in Alameda County Superior Court, the first Sikh judge ever named to the Sacramento County Superior Court and the first Filipino-American woman to serve as a superior court judge in the Bay Area.
Eumi K. Lee, 46, of San Francisco, has been appointed to a judgeship and is the first Korean-American judge ever appointed to Alameda County Superior Court. Lee is a clinical professor at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where she has been since 2005. She earned her B.A. from Pomona College her law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center. She fills the vacancy created by the elevation of Judge Alison M. Tucher to the First Appellate District.
Wendy McGuire Coats, 44, of Alamo, has been appointed to the Contra Costa County Superior Court. A partner at Fisher and Phillips LLP since 2016 and at McGuire Coats LLP from 2010 to 2016, Coats earned her B.S. from the University of Missouri and her law degree from the Pepperdine University School of Law. She fills the vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Barry P. Goode.
Joseph J. Burghardt, 46, of Manhattan Beach, has been appointed to a seat on the Los Angeles County Superior Court. Burghardt has served as a deputy public defender at the Law Offices of the Los Angeles County Public Defender since 2000 and was a trial attorney at the Federal Defenders of San Diego Inc. from 1997 to 2000. He eared undergraduate and graduate degrees from Stanford, and his law dgree from the University of San Francisco, School of Law. He fills the vacancy created by the conversion of a court commissioner position this past October.
Also appointed in Los Angeles County Superior Court was Lisa S. Tamashiro Coen, 45, of Fullerton and Anne Hwang, 42, of View Park-Windsor Hills.
Coen has served as a deputy district attorney at the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office since 2000. She was in private practice from 1999 to 2000 and an associate at Richards and Chemerinski from 1998 to 1999. Coen earned her BA from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and her law degree from Loyola Law School in LA. She fills the vacancy created by the conversion of a court commissioner position this past October.
Hwang has been chief deputy federal public defender in the Federal Public Defender’s Office in the Central District of California since 2018, and before that served as chief of the Los Angeles Trial Unit, supervising deputy federal public defender and deputy federal public defender. She was an associate at Irell and Manella LLP from 2002 to 2006. Hwang earned her B.A. from Cornell University and her law degree from the University of Southern California School of Law. She also fills a vacancy created by the conversion of a court commissioner position.
Johnnetta E. Anderson, 41, of Eastvale, has been appointed to a judgeship in the Riverside County Superior Court. Anderson has served as a supervising deputy public defender at the Law Offices of the Riverside County Public Defender since 2016, where she has served as a deputy public defender since 2006. She earned her B.A. from California State University, San Bernardino, and her law degree from the California Western School of Law. She fills the vacancy of a new position created this past July.