Gov. Tina Kotek has appointed labor and civil rights attorney Aruna Masih to the state Supreme Court, filling a vacancy left when former Justice Adrienne Nelson was appointed to the federal bench.
Kotek announced Masih’s appointment on Wednesday, more than four months after she began seeking applications for the open position on the seven-member court.
“Aruna Masih is a decorated civil rights attorney who has worked on behalf of Oregonians for over twenty-five years in both her career and community service,” Kotek said in a statement. “As a practicing attorney, Aruna will bring direct and recent experience working for people — an invaluable perspective that will strengthen the current Oregon Supreme Court. Aruna’s dedication to public service and passion for equal access to justice is also evident from her long-time leadership in advancing equity and diversity in the legal field.”
For the past two decades, Masih worked for Portland-based employment law firm Bennett Hartman LLP. She specialized in cases involving the state’s Public Employee Retirement System, representing state employees and unions in major PERS cases.
That included an unsuccessful challenge to a 2019 law that redirected some retirement contributions made by public employees to a pension stability fund instead of an employee’s individual retirement account.
Masih also has experience with election law, including challenges to ballot titles for voter-led initiatives.
In 2021, Masih represented the Newberg Education Association and several individual teachers who sued the Newberg School District over its ban on political symbols, including LGBTQ+ Pride flags and Black Lives Matter symbols. The lawsuit was settled last December, after a Yamhill County Circuit Court judge ruled in a separate case that the district policy was unconstitutional.
“Over the last twenty-five years, I’ve represented the interests of hundreds of Oregonians, and I look forward to bringing my unique perspective to the Oregon Supreme Court,” Masih said in a statement. “I am committed to being a fair and thoughtful Justice and to continue being a steward of equal access under the law.”
Masih was born in New York to medical missionaries, a Punjabi, Indian father and a British mother. Her parents moved back to India to work at a rural mission hospital when she was 6 months old. She spent most of her childhood in India, with her parents or attending an international boarding school in the Himalayas.
She returned to the U.S. for high school and went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in international relations and French from Wellesley College and a law degree from Tulane and Creighton universities.
Masih will be Oregon’s first Indian American and south Asian justice, according to the governor’s office.
She’s Kotek’s first appointment to a Supreme Court that was entirely shaped by former Gov. Kate Brown. Along with chief Justice Meagan Flynn and Justices Rebecca Duncan, Bronson James and Stephen Bushong, Masih will have to run for election for a full four-year term in 2024.
By Julia Shumway of Oregon Capital Chronicle
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