Gooch named to Missouri Supreme Court

By Scott Lauck on October 30, 2023

Note: This story has been updated with details from Monday’s news conference

Judge Ginger K. Gooch’s elevation to the Missouri Supreme Court may be the most symmetrical appointment in state history.

Gooch, whom Gov. Mike Parson announced as the high court’s newest member on Oct. 30, began her legal career as a law clerk for Judge Ann Covington, the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court. Last year, her appointment to the Court of Appeals Southern District gave that court its first-ever female majority.

Now, as she fills the vacancy left by Judge Patricia Breckenridge’s retirement earlier in October, Gooch will cement the Supreme Court’s status as a majority-female court and continue the legacy that Covington began.

“I think it boils down to wanting somebody to do the job the way I know it should be done,” Gooch, sounding both self-effacing and extremely confident, said at a press conference in front of Parson’s office in the state Capitol. “I hope that doesn’t sound arrogant, because I don’t mean it that way at all. But it’s very important to me that the Supreme Court continues to be an amazing institution like I experienced when I clerked there.”

In September, just prior to Breckenridge’s retirement, the governor appointed Judge Kelly Broniec to succeed Judge George W. Draper III. Broniec and Breckenridge, along with Chief Justice Mary R. Russell and Judge Robin Ransom, all served together ever so briefly when they participated in oral arguments together on Sept. 27. But it not clear if that female majority would persist, as Gooch’s two fellow candidates — Judges Michael E. Gardner and John P. Torbitzky — are men.

All three of Parson’s choices for the Supreme Court have been women, as he previously named Ransom to the court in 2021. They represent half of all the women ever to serve on the court. Yet while he was clearly pleased to have made what he noted was a “historic appointment,” the governor also stressed that Gooch wasn’t chosen for demographic reasons.

“The law is the law,” he said. “There’s no gender to it.”

Prior to joining the bench, Gooch had more than two decades of trial and appellate experience as an attorney with Husch Blackwell’s Springfield office. She earned her law degree in 2000 from the University of Missouri and went on to clerk for Covington prior to the judge’s retirement from the bench in 2001.

Gooch’s appointment is historic in a second way: She also is the first person from the Southern District to sit on the court since Judge John C. Holstein, who served from 1989 to 2002. Yet both she and Parson downplayed its significance.

“I’ll admit, being from southwest Missouri, I’m glad to see some representation from our part of the state on the bench,” Parson said. “But geography is not why Judge Gooch rose to the top. We chose her because she is the most qualified candidate, end of story.”

Gooch added that she was “enormously proud’ to represent her lifelong home on the court.

“But I also know my job is to serve the entire state, and that’s exactly what I’ll do,” she said.

Asked if the state of Missouri should expect anything different from a female-majority court, she said people should expect “hard work and service from all seven judges.”

“I would fully expect business as usual and outstanding work product and prompt decisions,” she said.

The governor’s announcement came less than a week after the Appellate Judicial Commission selected the panel of finalists on Oct. 24. He had forecast his interest in Gooch when he announced Broniec as his choice in September, calling her “extremely talented” and saying he hoped to see her again as a candidate.

“She was a stand-out candidate on the last panel, and we were thrilled to see her again on this panel,” Parson said. “We know she is the right woman for the job.”