Judges on the Nov. 3 ballot under state judicial positions include the following:
Mark K. Hanasono, associate justice, Court of Appeal, 2nd District, Division 3
In May 2025, Gov. Gavin Newsom nominated him for the Court of Appeal. In June 2025, the Commission on Judicial Appointments unanimously confirmed Hanasono after he received an “exceptionally well qualified” rating from the Judicial Nominees Evaluation Commission.
Hanasono received his bachelor’s degree in English from UC Berkeley, graduating summa cum laude with membership in the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. He received his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center.
After graduating from law school, Hanasono worked as a judicial law clerk in the District of Columbia Superior Court. From 2000 to 2004, he was an attorney for the Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender, representing indigent adult and juvenile clients.
In 2004, Hanasono transferred to the Office of the Los Angeles County Alternate Public Defender, where he represented indigent clients in all felony cases, including capital murder. He also served as a team leader, supervising a team of felony attorneys assigned to the Central District.
In 2013, Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Hanasono to the Los Angeles Superior Court, where he served in the Criminal Division for nearly 12 years. From 2018 to 2019, Hanasono was the assistant supervising judge of the Criminal Division, Limited Jurisdiction Courts. From 2020 to 2022, he was the assistant supervising judge of the Criminal Division.
Hanasono has taught as a lecturer in law at UCLA School of Law. He has served on the faculty of the Center for Judicial Education and Research and the Los Angeles Superior Court’s Judicial Education Seminars program and presented for the University of California’s Continuing Education of the Bar.
He has published articles in the UC Law Constitutional Law Quarterly, the State Bar’s Criminal Law Journal, and Berkeley Law’s Asian American Law Journal.
During World War II, his mother’s family was sent to Manzanar and his father’s family left California for Colorado rather than go to camp. He first learned about the Japanese American wartime experience from the book “Farewell to Manzanar.” As a law clerk in the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, he found Denver police records showing where his father’s family had been required to register.
Audra M. Mori, associate justice, Court of Appeal, 2nd District, Division 4
In 2018, Gov. Brown appointed Mori to the Los Angeles Superior Court, where she presided over civil and family law cases. While there, she was appointed to serve as chair of the Los Angeles Superior Court Judicial Mentor Program and was a member of numerous other court committees.
In 2023, Gov. Newsom appointed her as an associate justice of the California Court of Appeal. She was unanimously confirmed by the Commission on Judicial Appointments after receiving an “exceptionally well qualified” rating from the Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation.
Mori was born and raised in Los Angeles County. She earned her bachelor’s degree from UCLA and her law degree from Cornell Law School.
After law school, Mori clerked for Richard W. Goldberg of the U.S. Court of International Trade and worked at large law firms. For much of her career, she worked at Perkins Coie LLP, where she practiced intellectual property and commercial litigation and served in various leadership roles. She was the first woman of color to serve as managing partner of a firm office. She also served as chair of the firm’s global Diversity Committee.
Mori has held leadership positions in several bar associations. She was president of the Japanese American Bar Association and a regional governor of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association. She serves on the Executive Committee of the Litigation Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association and has co-chaired its Programs Committee.
Mori, whose father was incarcerated as a boy at Heart Mountain in Wyoming, She told The Daily Journal in 2019 that she pieced together her family’s history from anecdotes from her father and others, and law classes she took in college to understand the mass incarceration led her to a legal career.