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Per-judge retention calls inside

The ballot

Missouri Court of Appeals judges are appointed by the governor under the Nonpartisan Court Plan from a nominating commission's three names, then face yes-or-no retention votes in their districts — first after at least a year of service, then every 12 years. A majority of YES votes retains the judge for a 12-year term. The election is November 3, 2026. Five Court of Appeals judges are up: three in the Eastern District (St. Louis region), one in the Southern (Springfield/Ozarks/Bootheel), and one in the Western (Kansas City region). You vote only on your own district's judges.

The Missouri Judicial Performance Review Committee — lawyers, non-lawyers, and retired judges, funded by The Missouri Bar — evaluated every judge on lawyer surveys and written opinions and recommended retaining all 50 judges on the 2026 ballot, including all five below; each judge's official evaluation page is linked in the sources. The committee's clean sweep is a fact, and so is the criticism of it (a conservative review project notes voters "receive the same recommendation for every judge"). This guide therefore prices the committee recommendation as one input and prints each judge's own documented record beside it.

Eastern District

Virginia W. Lay — Appointed by Gov. Mike Parson, November 2024; first retention vote. Path: assistant attorney general and special assistant circuit attorney; Associate Circuit Judge, 21st Circuit (April 2019–November 2021); Circuit Judge, 21st Circuit (November 2021–November 2024); then this court. Columbia University and Washington University Law. Committee: recommends retention. Documented ruling: authored Johnson v. Missouri State Highway Patrol (2026), upholding dismissal of a sex-offender-registration exemption petition under the five-year refiling bar, and the March 2026 opinion keeping two St. Louis workers' wrongful-discharge case in court rather than private arbitration after they were fired for fighting off armed robbers. No adverse record found. Retain.

Angela Turner Quigless — Appointed by Gov. Jay Nixon, April 2012. The longest-serving judge in this guide: Associate Circuit Judge, 22nd Circuit (1995–2003), Circuit Judge, 22nd Circuit (2003–2012), twice a special Supreme Court judge, and before the bench an assistant U.S. attorney, assistant city counselor, assistant circuit attorney, and assistant general counsel to the Public Service Commission. University of Missouri and Saint Louis University Law. Committee: recommends retention. Documented ruling: authored Planned Parenthood of St. Louis Region v. Missouri Department of Social Services (2021), dismissing a Medicaid-reimbursement appeal for lack of a final judgment — a jurisdictional ruling, applied as written. No adverse record found. Retain.

Rebeca Navarro-McKelvey — Appointed by Gov. Mike Parson, December 2023; first retention vote (the committee and court records style her surname Navarro-McKelvey; the compiled roster shortens it to McKelvey — same judge). Path: St. Charles County sex-crimes and child-abuse prosecutor and chief legal counsel to the 11th Circuit's Family Court Juvenile Office; elected Associate Circuit Judge in 2016 and elected Circuit Judge in 2020 before appointment to this court — she has faced voters and won twice. University of Missouri, B.A. and J.D. Committee: recommends retention. Documented ruling: authored State v. McClain (2024), upholding murder convictions against search challenges, on abandonment and emergency-circumstances grounds, in a triple-homicide investigation. No adverse record found. Retain.

Southern District

Matt Hamner — Appointed by Gov. Mike Parson, March/April 2024; first retention vote. (The governor's appointment is dated March 2024 in the retention guides and April 2024 on his evaluation page; the spring-2024 appointment itself is not in dispute.) Path: private-practice shareholder; Associate Circuit Judge for Camden County; Circuit Judge and Presiding Judge of the 26th Judicial Circuit; president of his circuit bar association; clerked for Missouri Supreme Court Justice William Ray Price Jr. University of Missouri, B.A. and J.D. Committee: recommends retention. An independent conservative review project read 16 of his 2024–26 rulings for its own guide — the fact that his short record sustains that much published scrutiny, with the committee's recommendation alongside it, is the documented state of the file. No adverse record found. Retain.

Western District

Lisa White Hardwick — Appointed by Gov. Bob Holden, May 2001; chief judge 2010–12. Twenty-five years on this court — the longest appellate service in this guide — atop service as a 16th Circuit judge (2000–01), a Shook, Hardy & Bacon partnership (1992–2000), and election to the Jackson County Legislature (1993–2000). Harvard Law. Committee: recommends retention. Documented ruling: sat on the unanimous Fitz-James v. Ashcroft (2023) panel that found the secretary of state's summaries for six citizen initiatives insufficient and unfair and certified replacement language — ballot-summary judging that initiative supporters of every stripe have both won and lost under. No adverse record found. Retain.

OUR CALL

Retain — all five: Virginia W. Lay, Angela Turner Quigless, and Rebeca Navarro-McKelvey (Eastern); Matt Hamner (Southern); Lisa White Hardwick (Western).

Our standard is the same in every state in this coverage: Retain for a serviceable documented record; Do Not Retain requires proven cause — documented misconduct, proven activist judging, or an evaluation failure. All five carry the Judicial Performance Review Committee's retention recommendation, and the individual files behind the sweep are genuinely individual: two former presiding/chief judges, an elected-twice judge elevated from the trial bench, a former federal prosecutor with three decades on St. Louis benches, and a first-term judge whose rulings are already publicly catalogued. The dirt column is empty at the proven standard for all five — this research worked the committee evaluations, the official court biographies, and both a conservative and a progressive retention guide, and found no misconduct, discipline, or competence case against any of them. The documented disagreements are single-ruling disagreements, printed above, and they do not meet this page's bar for removal.

For the complete Election 2026 breakdown — every race, claim by claim — see the full coverage on our website.

Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Sources

Election result — November 4, 2026

Result pending. No verified call (Associated Press or official) as of November 4, 2026. This page will be updated when the race is called or certified. The original article above is unchanged.

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

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