Goorvitch brings writs, criminal, regulatory experience to appellate bench

Justice Stephen I. Goorvitch drew on his trial court experience handling environmental writs when he wrote a unanimous 2nd District opinion upholding a ruling that set aside Long Beach's approval of a self-service car wash beside elementary school playgrounds.

In Long Beach Unified School District v. City of Long Beach (2025), he found the city had declared the project exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act without considering the school district's evidence that increased traffic to the gas station next door would raise benzene emissions.

After his pro tem assignments, Gov. Gavin Newsom nominated Goorvitch to Division 2 and he was confirmed in May. He now seeks an eight-year term in the Nov. 3 retention vote.

Goorvitch's questions during an appellate hearing drew notice in August when Jay-Z asked Division 2 to revive his extortion and defamation suit against Houston attorney Tony Buzbee, whose client had accused the rapper of sexually assaulting her when she was 13. Jay-Z relied on a recorded interview in which private investigators obtained statements from the woman suggesting Buzbee had pushed her to accuse him.

"My concern is a plaintiff's lawyer shows up in court and says, magically, this interview has been dropped in my lap," Goorvitch said, according to Bloomberg Law. "It looks highly suspicious that somehow somebody talked to Mr. Buzbee's client directly."

Writing for the unanimous panel in Carter v. The Buzbee Law Firm (2026), Justice Anne Richardson raised concerns that Jay-Z's lawyers might have arranged the interview in violation of professional ethics rules and that the woman's statements might be unreliable. The panel made no findings on those issues. It upheld the recording's exclusion as inadmissible hearsay and affirmed dismissal of the suit.

In People v. Capiendo (2025), Goorvitch vacated a robbery-murder special circumstance against a man who helped beat and kidnap a victim and dump his body. The robbery finding rested solely on uncorroborated accomplice testimony, he wrote. The life-without-parole sentence stood on two other special circumstances.

In People v. Cortez (2026), he affirmed the convictions of a man who sexually abused his two nieces beginning when they were about 7 and 10, finding a jury instruction error harmless. Both panels were unanimous.

Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Goorvitch to the Los Angeles County Superior Court in 2015, where he handled criminal trials and civil cases. He finished his trial court service in Writs and Receivers, where most petitions challenged environmental and land use regulations.

In U.S. Hemp Roundtable v. California Department of Public Health (2024), Goorvitch refused to block the state's emergency ban on hemp foods and drinks containing THC. Lost revenue did not outweigh the state's interest in protecting children, he wrote, noting that companies could still sell THC through the licensed cannabis system.

He rejected the argument that the state's three-year delay meant there was no emergency. Had the state moved sooner, he wrote, the companies "undoubtedly would have argued that there was an insufficient record to support the finding of emergency."

A graduate of UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, Goorvitch began his career as a staff attorney in the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Enforcement. He clerked for federal trial and appellate judges before joining O'Melveny & Myers LLP.

One of his career highlights came through his pro bono representation of a Peruvian facing deportation. Goorvitch petitioned the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Board of Immigration Appeals vacated the client's removal order, requiring a new hearing because of due process violations.

As an assistant U.S. attorney in the Central District of California from 2007 to 2015, he handled corporate fraud investigations and prosecuted Ponzi and mortgage fraud schemes targeting elderly and low-income victims. A NASA award for a procurement fraud prosecution hangs in his chambers. His late father, a San Pedro longshoreman, became a NASA physicist.

Away from the bench, Goorvitch volunteers with his local humane society and a nonprofit dog rescue.