Darleen Ortega

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Darleen Ortega is a judge for Position 3 of the Oregon Court of Appeals. She assumed office in 2003. Her current term ends on January 1, 2029.

Ortega won re-election for the Position 3 judge of the Oregon Court of Appeals outright in the primary on May 17, 2022, after the general election was canceled.

Ortega completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. Click here to read the survey answers.

Ortega was appointed to the court by Democratic Governor Ted Kulongoski in August 2003.^[1]

Education

Ortega received her B.A. in writing and literature from George Fox College in 1984 and her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1989.^[2]

Career

Ortega began her legal career in 1989 as an attorney in private practice in Detroit, Michigan. In 1992, she moved to Portland, Oregon. She was in private practice, specializing in complex civil cases and appeals, until she joined the Oregon Court of Appeals in 2003.^[2]

Elections

2022

Nonpartisan primary election

Nonpartisan primary for Oregon Court of Appeals Position 3

Incumbent Darleen Ortega won election outright against Vance Day in the primary for Oregon Court of Appeals Position 3 on May 17, 2022.

	Candidate	%	Votes
✔	Darleen Ortega (Nonpartisan)	62.2	547,660
	Vance Day (Nonpartisan)	37.5	330,454
	Other/Write-in votes	0.3	2,473

	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 880,587
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Endorsements

To view Ortega's endorsements in the 2022 election, please click here.

2016

Ortega was re-elected to her seat on May 17, running unopposed.^[3]

Oregon Court of Appeals, Position 3, 2016
Candidate	Vote %	Votes
Darleen Ortega Incumbent (unopposed)	98.89%	657,261
Write-in votes	1.11%	7,375
Total Votes (100% reporting)		664,636
Source: Oregon Secretary of State Official Results

2010

Ortega ran for re-election to the Oregon Court of Appeals in 2010 and won unopposed with 98.71 percent of the vote.^[4]

See also: Oregon judicial elections, 2010

Campaign themes

2022

Ballotpedia survey responses

Darleen Ortega completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Ortega's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

I am currently a Presiding Judge and the longest tenured judge at the Oregon Court of Appeals, where I have served for almost 20 years. In that time, I have dedicated myself to improving Oregon's justice system and have earned a reputation as a judge who listens intently, thinks critically, builds consensus, treats all litigants respectfully and fairly, decides cases without regard to any political ideology, and writes clear and understandable opinions. I was the first woman of color and remain the only Latina to serve on Oregon's appellate bench, and my own experiences, along with my innate curiosity and compassion, have fueled my desire to seek out the stories of marginalized communities and to educate myself about the barriers they face when interacting with the legal system. I believe that, by better understanding those barriers and recognizing some of the assumptions that have been built into our legal system, we can start asking better questions of ourselves and of the litigants; we can have greater insight into the factual records that come before us; and we can apply the law in ways that are more just.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

I am experienced and highly competent. I have authored over 800 opinions and have participated in thousands of cases during my time on the Court of Appeals. That experience has not made me complacent nor institutionalized my thinking. I approach each case with care and compassion and strive to be accessible and accountable to the public's need for transparency, thoughtfulness, and humility from its leaders.
I am a judicial and community leader, including on issues of access to justice. I am a frequent speaker and discussion leader on addressing the gaps that exist between the goal of justice and the lived experience of people who interact with the legal system. I relentlessly make space for the voices of the unheard and lead by example in a practice of listening to those voices myself.
I approach my work with integrity and a relentless commitment to the ideal of justice for all.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

I am particularly passionate about and proud of the work I have done in areas of law that frequently touch the lives of marginalized persons and their families: juvenile law; criminal law; abuse protection orders; and post-conviction cases. From my own experience and my efforts to learn about the lived experiences of marginalized communities, I know that many Oregonians struggle to tell judges their stories in ways that we can hear, or to obtain meaningful access to counsel, or to navigate their interactions with decision-makers. I’ve worked consistently during my time at the Court of Appeals to help us notice and engage the voices who have been missing from our conversations, and I have brought that broader lens to the Court’s work, examining the biases and structural inequalities that influence development of the law. Our work as appellate judges is about listening well and applying the law to the facts in a way that reflects understanding of and engagement with the experiences of all those who come before us. That area of public policy–access to justice for Oregonians from all walks of life–has been a focal point of my judicial career.

Who do you look up to? Whose example would you like to follow, and why?

I am very inspired by the example of Thurgood Marshall, who spent his career before becoming a judge representing the most marginalized people at great personal cost, including risk to his life. Those experiences shaped him as a judge; he never lost sight of the stakes (which he assessed more accurately than most judges do) and was courageous about speaking up, far ahead of his time.

What characteristics or principles are most important for an elected official?

Even for those of us who come from historically marginalized communities, elected office is a place of privilege that insulates us from the experiences of most citizens, especially those who are most vulnerable. I think it's especially important for an elected official to make the extra and ongoing effort needed to put herself in a position to listen to the perspectives of the most vulnerable, who have the hardest time being heard inside systems like the legal system where I do my work. I need to allow what I learn about their experiences to motivate me to stay curious about what I don't know, about the injustices that I won't readily see, and also to help me to maintain the necessary urgency to stay engaged even when I can't see a way to make things better. It's only by staying engaged in that way that I can hope to do my job with integrity and to move the system toward justice.

What legacy would you like to leave?

I hope to leave a legacy of demonstrating how it is possible to move through the legal world and the world at large in a way that is engaged, curious, and committed to justice and all that is true, and that makes space for everyone at the table. I want to live that way myself, and to inspire others to live that way too. I want to inspire people to show up with everything, and to practice listening and working together to make the world a more connected and humane place.

What is the first historical event that happened in your lifetime that you remember? How old were you at the time?

I recall very clearly my mother telling me that Robert Kennedy had been shot when I was six years old. I didn't really understand very fully but I recall grasping that it was a terrible and sad thing and that he was an important leader.

What was your very first job? How long did you have it?

My very first jobs were as a babysitter and piano teacher, both jobs I did throughout my teenage years. I bought my own clothes from the age of ten.

If you could be any fictional character, who would you want to be?

Neo in "The Matrix"

Do you believe that empathy is an important quality for a judge?

Yes. Appellate judges work with a record that is fixed--but empathy helps us to stay appropriately curious about what the record shows so that we don't fall into assuming things that we should not assume and to stay humble about the impacts of our work, many of which are hard for us to see.

Why are you running for this particular court seat?

I have dedicated the past two decades of my life to improving Oregon's justice system, and I am running for re-election to continue that work. Being a judge is not just about calling balls and strikes, as much as people like to describe it that way. Resolution of legal disputes involves nuance and subjectivity, and judges must be curious and well-informed about the communities they serve to do that work well. I understand well the limits of the judicial role and navigate those limits ethically and skillfully—indeed, I bring to the bench experience and insight into all areas of law, spanning contract disputes to tort law to criminal law to juvenile law to constitutional issues, and have helped shape those areas of the law and consistently produced some of the highest quality opinions to come out of the court. Importantly, that has not made me rigid in my thinking; rather, my experience enables me to be ever more adept at finding ways to engage the work with curiosity informed by years of listening well. I have educated myself about barriers to access to justice and have led our judiciary in addressing patterns of inequity. I still have much to contribute to that work.

What is your primary concern about today's legal system in your state?

In my state--as in every state--there are persistent inequities that we have not spent the necessary time and energy to address--or indeed, to equip ourselves to do so. For example, Black, indigenous, and people of color are disproportionately impacted by the criminal and carceral systems, and BIPOC children are overrepresented in the juvenile dependency and delinquency systems. Also, those with the least power--the poor, the unhoused, immigrants, low-wage workers, people with disabilities--face real barriers in navigating the legal system. Judges cannot address those inequities alone, but we can do a better job of educating ourselves about those inequities, of listening with curiosity and without defensiveness to those who suffer disproportionately bad outcomes in the system that we participate in administering, and of engaging with community members about our work so that the public can more effectively participate in holding us accountable for how we engage our work. We can and should work harder to engage productively in conversations about how the legal system is doing and how it can be improved so that people more often have access to real justice.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

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