How do judges of the Washington Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 2012 / Active

Steven C. Gonzalez

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Steven C. Gonzalez is a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, serving since 2012. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1963 · age 63
Tenure: Since 2012 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2012	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Pitzer College
University of California-Berkeley

Judicial Record

In our data, Gonzalez authored 11 published opinions for the court (2015–2019). Most cited: Floeting v. Grp. Health Coop. (32 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 11 of these were attributed to Gonzalez by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
2019	Floeting v. Grp. Health Coop.†	434 P.3d 39	32
2018	Afoa v. Port of Seattle†	421 P.3d 903	29
2018	State v. Henderson†	430 P.3d 637	11
2019	State v. Morgan†	440 P.3d 136	10
2019	Thurston Cnty. Ex Rel. Snaza v. City of Olympia†	440 P.3d 988	10
2018	State v. Blockman†	416 P.3d 1194	7
2015	In re Adoption of M.S.M.-P.†	184 Wash. 2d 496	7
2018	Belling v. Wash. State Emp't SEC. Dep't†	427 P.3d 611	3
2019	City of Shoreline v. McLemore†	438 P.3d 1161	2
2018	In re Disciplinary Proceeding Against Waechter†	419 P.3d 827	1
2019	Elster v. City Of Seattle†	444 P.3d 590	0

Showing the 11 most-cited of 11 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Washington Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court is Steven C. Gonzalez on?: Steven C. Gonzalez is a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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14 years on the Washington Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).