Oregon Supreme Court Chief Justice Martha Walters will vacate her seat three years before her term ends. The 72-year-old justice would have to retire after she turned 75, according to Oregon law, meaning if she filled out her term it’d be up to the next governor to appoint a new chief justice. With the close governor’s race, the retirement will allow Gov. Kate Brown to appoint someone more likely to be in line with Walters’ jurisprudence than if Republican candidate Christine Drazen wins the race.
Brown could also replace two other departing Supreme Court justices. Thomas Balmer announced he’d retire in December and in July Adrienne Nelson was nominated to the federal bench. Nelson’s departure is dependent on her confirmation by the U.S. Senate; a hearing is scheduled for the end of December.
Walters is exiting after a year of struggling to fix the state’s broken public defense system. There were about 800 people without representation when Walters made her announcement. Walters oversees the Office of Public Defense Services, and in August called for executive director Stephen Singer to be fired after running the agency for eight months. When the Oregon Public Defense Commission failed to fire Singer, she dismissed the commission and reappointed members, most of whom voted to fire Singer. A few days later Singer was out.
On Oct. 6 Singer filed a lawsuit claiming he faced retaliation as a whistleblower, naming Walters as well as the former executive director of the agency. The $2.4 million lawsuit alleges Walters attempted to appoint “obviously unqualified attorneys to represent indigent defendants, and to meddle in the day-to-day affairs of public defense in Oregon.”
Walters will be replaced by Justice Meagan Flynn, who was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2017 and was re-elected to a six-year term that runs through 2025.
This article appears in Source Weekly October 27, 2022.
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