Three Superior Court judges were elevated to the appellate division on Thursday by Chief Justice Stuart Rabner in a move that provides geographic, racial, gender, generational, and political diversity to the state’s judiciary.
Effective immediately, Kay Walcott-Henderson, Lisa Perez Friscia, and Mark K. Chase have been assigned to the appellate court.
Gov. Phil Murphy has already considered two new appellate judges for New Jersey Supreme Court seats. Walcott made the shortlist in 2020, but Murphy instead picked Fabiana Pierre-Louis for the seat; Perez Friscia was one of the finalists for the nomination that recently went to Michael Noriega.
A sitting appellate court judge, Richard Geiger, is retiring next month when he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70 and will begin to draw his judicial pension. Rabner announced yesterday that he would be retained on recall to complete appellate division matters and to continue to serve as the Special Master in State v. Cunningham.
Before her nomination to the Superior Court in 2016, the 51-year-old Walcott-Henderson served as chief counsel to the Assembly Democrats under Speaker Joseph Roberts and as first assistant counsel to Gov. Jon Corzine. Corzine appointed her to serve as a Workers’ Compensation Court Judge after he lost re-election in 2009. Rabner had named her as the presiding judge of the general equity division in Mercer County last year, and temporarily assigned her to the appellate division in April.
Friscia, 52, was nominated to the bench in 2008 and has served as presiding judge of the civil and general equity division in Bergen County. She has no party affiliation but has voted in Republican primaries in the past and contributed to the Bergen County Republican Organization.
The 53-year-old Chase has had a dazzling rise in the judiciary since his nomination in 2017. A Camden County Republican, Chase is among an elite group of judges that have made it to the appellate division before becoming tenured.
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