PHOENIX — Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs appointed Maria Elena Cruz to the Arizona Supreme Court on Wednesday, making the state appellate judge from Yuma County the first Latina and first Black person chosen for the state’s high court.
Hobbs’ selection of Cruz marks the first Supreme Court appointment by a Democratic governor since 2005. It also broadens the racial, geographic and political diversity of the seven-member, Republican-dominated court.
Since the establishment of the Arizona Supreme Court in 1912, no justice has identified as Black. Only one – Supreme Court Vice Chief Justice John Lopez – has been Latino. Cruz, a Democrat, will become the second person of Hispanic heritage and first person of African descent to preside on the bench.
Previous GOP governors Doug Ducey and Jan Brewer were responsible for selecting the other six justices, who all reside in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous county that includes Phoenix.
The Oct. 31 retirement of Justice Robert Brutinel presented Hobbs the rare opportunity to fill the court’s vacancy with a selection of her own. The justices have ruled in recent years on cases concerning several hot-button issues, including abortion and elections, leading to accusations of political bias.
Under Arizona law, the Commission on Appellate Court Appointments is required to provide the governor no fewer than three names to pick from. On Dec. 9, the 16-member commission, chaired by Supreme Court Chief Justice Ann Timmer, interviewed eight applicants. It ultimately sent a list of five names to Hobbs, who had 60 days to make her decision.
Born in New York to a Puerto Rican father and a Dominican mother, Cruz was 14 when she and her family relocated to Yuma County, the southwestern corner of Arizona where the state meets California and Mexico.
She was a student at Arizona Western College and an elementary school teacher when she was involved in a car accident that changed her life’s trajectory. After securing legal representation, she found herself sitting across from a lawyer and discussing her case. It was then she had an epiphany.
“Here is someone who is doing something really meaningful, someone who affects people’s lives with the work that he does,” Cruz once told an interviewer, reflecting on her thinking in that moment.
She inquired about his path into the legal profession. When he spoke of the importance of law school and the requirement to pass the bar exam, she said she was determined to be a lawyer.
Later that day, she told her employer she was resigning to pursue a law degree.
Cruz earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Arizona in 1998 and a juris doctorate from the university’s James E. Rogers College of Law in 2001. She was a law clerk for the Pima County Attorney’s Office, a prosecutor for the Yuma County Attorney’s Office and a criminal defense attorney in private practice.
She became a judge pro-tem for the Cocopah Indian Tribe in 2005. Between 2009 and 2017, she served as a judge for Yuma County Superior Court.
Since 2017, Cruz has served as a judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals. Appointed by Ducey, she was the Republican governor’s first selection of a Democrat to serve on a state appellate court.
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Gabriel Sandoval is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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