Natalie StoneIncumbent

Candidate for Court of Appeal Justice, California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division 7, Seat 2

Natalie P. Stone is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 7, in Los Angeles. She grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. She graduated cum laude from Duke University in 1993. She then earned her J.D. from the UCLA School of Law. After law school, she was a clerk for Judge A. Wallace Tashima of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, from 1998 to 1999. She then spent more than a decade as an associate at a firm called Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, in Los Angeles, from 1999 to 2010. From 2010 to 2015, she worked as an appellate judicial attorney at the Second District Court of Appeal. That is the very court on which she now sits. Gov. Jerry Brown put her on the Los Angeles County Superior Court in July 2015. She served there as a trial judge for nearly nine years. On March 26, 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom made known her pick for the Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 7. The Commission on Judicial Appointments confirmed her, with no votes against. She took her oath of office on May 14, 2024. On November 3, 2026, voters in the district will mark yes or no on whether to keep her in her seat. That district covers Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo counties. This will be her first retention vote of this kind on the appeals court. Votes of this kind are nonpartisan, and no one is running against her.

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