A seven member panel selected Indiana’s first female chief justice today. Justice Loretta Rush was selected to lead the Indiana Supreme Court. All of the Court’s sitting members were seeking the appointment. Rush will manage the day-to-day operations of Indiana’s highest court.
As the Huffington Post writes:
The Indiana judiciary has struggled with gender diversity. In 2009, female judges made up only a third of all Indiana Court of Appeals judges.
The federal bench is not significantly more diverse when it comes to gender. While close to a third of federal trial court judges are female, there are nine district courts around the country in which a woman has never served on the bench. Thirty-five percent of federal appeals court judges are female.
Former Governor Mitch Daniels appointed Rush to the state’s Supreme Court in 2012. She had previously served as a Superior Court judge in Tippecanoe County. She graduated from both Purdue and Indiana University, earning her undergraduate degree from Purdue and a law degree from Indiana University Maurer School of Law in Bloomington.
According to her official state biography, Justice Rush “assisted with the creation of the county’s Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program. She also implemented a certified juvenile drug treatment court and initiated a twenty-four-hour assessment center for youth. During her tenure, she helped initiate, develop and sustain more than twenty-five youth programs. Prior to that she spent 15 years in general legal practice and eventually became a partner at a Lafayette firm.”
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