Sheryl Gordon McCloud (born October 5, 1955) is an American

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Uni ...

and Associate Justice of the Washington Supreme Court. She was elected to replace outgoing Associate Justice

Tom Chambers Tom or Thomas Chambers may refer to: Government and politics * Sir Thomas Chambers (colonial administrator) (died 1692), British administrator and factor of the British East India Company in Madras * Sir Thomas Chambers (British politician) (1814 ...

on Seat 9 of the Washington Supreme Court, winning 55.24% of the vote and defeating former Associate Justice

Richard B. Sanders Richard B. Sanders is a former justice of the Washington Supreme Court. Early life and education Richard Sanders attended Highline High School. In school, he played horn in the band and was a member of the debate team. He graduated from the Unive ...

. With her election, the Washington Supreme Court is now majority-female. McCloud is a 1976 graduate of the University at Buffalo and a 1984 graduate of the USC Gould School of Law. While in law school, she served as an editor of the

Southern California Law Review The ''Southern California Law Review'' is the flagship scholarly journal of the USC Gould School of Law The USC Gould School of Law, located in Los Angeles, California, is the law school of the University of Southern California. The oldest law s ...

. In February 2017, Justice McCloud authored the unanimous court's opinion in the Arlene's Flowers lawsuit, finding that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution gave the florist no right to refuse to provide services for a gay wedding, writing "this case is no more about the access to flowers than civil rights cases were about access to sandwiches." In September 2017, McCloud dissented when, by a vote of 5–3, the court upheld the child pornography trafficking conviction of a seventeen-year-old boy for sexting a picture of himself to an adult woman. In October 2018, McCloud joined the majority when the court abolished the state's death penalty because they found its racist imposition violated the Constitution of Washington. In February 2021, McCloud authored the 5-4 majority opinion in ''State v. Blake'', which ruled that the statute criminalizing simple possession of controlled substances was unconstitutional. The statute did not require prosecutors to prove someone knowingly possessed drugs, and McCloud argued that criminalizing passive, unknowing conduct is unconstitutional.

References

External links

McCloud For Justice
Campaign Website {{DEFAULTSORT:McCloud, Sheryl Gordon 20th-century American Jews 20th-century American women 21st-century American Jews 21st-century American judges 21st-century American women judges 1955 births Justices of the Washington Supreme Court Living people University at Buffalo alumni USC Gould School of Law alumni