Gabriel P. Sanchez

Justice Sanchez was appointed to the First Appellate District in October 2018 by Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. He serves as an Associate Justice in Division One.

Before joining the Court, Justice Sanchez served for seven years as Governor Brown’s Deputy Legal Affairs Secretary and was a senior advisor on corrections and criminal justice matters. He was responsible for managing and directing all state and federal prisoner class action cases and other significant corrections litigation and appeals, supervising the work of several hundred attorneys from the Office of the Attorney General and outside counsel. Justice Sanchez also advised the Governor and other senior staff on criminal justice reform legislation, executive appointments, parole and clemency decisions, and regulatory changes. He played an instrumental role in the drafting and implementation of the landmark Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016 and its enabling regulations.

Justice Sanchez began his career as an associate at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, where he litigated a wide range of commercial matters at the trial and appellate levels. He had an active pro bono practice and received the ACLU of Southern California’s Social Justice Award in 2010 for his work on Bautista v. State of California, a lawsuit brought to enforce and improve heat illness protection safety regulations for California farmworkers.

Prior to joining the Governor’s Office, Justice Sanchez served as a deputy in the Correctional Law Section of the Office of the Attorney General in San Francisco, where he was a lead attorney on several complex prisoner class action cases, including Coleman v. Brown, Plata v. Brown, and Three Judge Court.

Justice Sanchez received his B.A. from Yale College in 1998, graduating cum laude with distinction in two majors. He was a Fulbright Scholar in 1999 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he surveyed and wrote on presidential electoral campaign politics. He earned a Master of Philosophy degree in European Studies from the University of Cambridge in 2000, and a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School in 2005. He clerked for the Honorable Richard A. Paez on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 2005 to 2006.

Justice Sanchez is a native of Los Angeles and lives with his wife Christina Meyer and their son in Oakland, California.