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Lynne Boomgaarden
2018 - Present
2028
7
Lynne Boomgaarden is a judge of the Wyoming Supreme Court. She assumed office on February 20, 2018. Her current term ends on December 31, 2028.
Boomgaarden ran for re-election for judge of the Wyoming Supreme Court. She won in the retention election on November 3, 2020.
Boomgaarden first became a member of the Wyoming Supreme Court when she was appointed by Gov. Matt Mead (R) in December 2017 to succeed William Hill. To read more about judicial selection in Wyoming, click here.[1][2]
Boomgaarden was elected by her peers as chief justice of the court on May 28, 2025.[3]
In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship, a study examining the partisan affiliation of all state supreme court justices in the country. As part of this study, we assigned each justice a Confidence Score describing our confidence in the degree of partisanship exhibited by the justices' past partisan behavior, before they joined the court.[4] Boomgaarden received a confidence score of Mild Republican.[5] Click here to read more about this study.
Biography
Boomgaarden received a B.S. from the University of Wyoming in 1983 and a J.D. from the University of Wyoming Law School in 1991. During her legal studies, she served as editor-in-chief of the Law Review and was admitted to the Order of the Coif.[1][2]
Before serving on the supreme court, Boomgaarden was a partner at Crowley Fleck from 2013 to 2017. Previously, she worked in private practice from 2010 to 2017. From 2003 to 2010, she was the director of the Wyoming Office of State Lands and Investments.[1]
Boomgaarden has also served as an assistant professor of law at the University of Wyoming College of Law and a career clerk to the Hon. Wade Brorby of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.[1]
Elections
2020
Wyoming Supreme Court
Lynne Boomgaarden was retained to the Wyoming Supreme Court on November 3, 2020 with 80.9% of the vote.
Retention Vote |
% |
Votes |
|||
| ✔ | Yes |
80.9
|
192,461 | ||
No |
19.1
|
45,562 | |||
Total Votes |
238,023 | ||||
|
|
2017
Boomgaarden first became a member of the Wyoming Supreme Court when she was appointed by Gov. Matt Mead (R) in December 2017 to succeed William Hill.[1]
Campaign themes
2020
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Lynne Boomgaarden did not complete Ballotpedia's 2020 Candidate Connection survey.
Analysis
Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship (2020)
Last updated: June 15, 2020
In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship, a study examining the partisan affiliation of all state supreme court justices in the country as of June 15, 2020.
The study presented Confidence Scores that represented our confidence in each justice's degree of partisan affiliation. This was not a measure of where a justice fell on an ideological spectrum, but rather a measure of how much confidence we had that a justice was or had been affiliated with a political party. The scores were based on seven factors, including but not limited to party registration.[6]
The five resulting categories of Confidence Scores were:
- Strong Democrat
- Mild Democrat
- Indeterminate[7]
- Mild Republican
- Strong Republican
This justice's Confidence Score, as well as the factors contributing to that score, is presented below. The information below was current as of June 2020.
Lynne
Boomgaarden
Wyoming
- Partisan Confidence Score:
Mild Republican - Judicial Selection Method:
Assisted appointment through hybrid judicial nominating commission - Key Factors:
- Donated less than $2,000 to Democratic candidates
- Appointed by a Republican governor
- State was a Republican trifecta at time of appointment
Partisan Profile
Details:
Boomgaarden was appointed to the court by Gov. Matt Mead (R) in 2017. At the time of her appointment, Wyoming was a Republican trifecta. She donated $500 to Republican candidates.
State supreme court judicial selection in Wyoming
- See also: Judicial selection in Wyoming
The five justices of the Wyoming Supreme Court are selected through the assisted appointment method. When a vacancy occurs, the governor appoints a replacement from a list of three names provided by a nominating commission. There are seven members on the commission. Three members must be lawyers appointed by the state bar and three must be non-lawyers appointed by the governor. The chief justice of the supreme court serves as chairman and only votes in the event of a tie. The governor must appoint a person from the commission's list.[8][9]
Newly appointed judges serve for at least one year, after which they must stand for retention in the next general election. If retained, a judge will finish the remainder of his or her predecessor's unexpired term. Subsequent terms last eight years.[10][11]
Qualifications
To serve on the supreme court, a judge must be:
- a U.S. citizen;
- a state resident for at least three years;
- at least nine years legal experience;
- no younger than 30 years old; and
- no older than 70.*[10]
Chief justice
The chief justice of the supreme court is selected by peer vote, serving in that capacity for four years.[8]
Vacancies
When a vacancy occurs, the governor appoints a replacement from a list of three names provided by a nominating commission. After the appointed justice has served at least one year, they must stand for retention in the next general election. If retained, a judge will finish the remainder of his or her predecessor's unexpired term. Subsequent terms last eight years.[8]
The map below highlights how vacancies are filled in state supreme courts across the country.
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Wyoming State Bar, "Governor appoints Boomgaarden to Wyoming Supreme Court," December 15, 2017
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Wyoming Judicial Branch, "Justice Lynne Boomgaarden," accessed June 17, 2019
- ↑ Facebook, "Wyoming State Bar," accessed June 2, 2025
- ↑ We calculated confidence scores by collecting several data points such as party registration, donations, and previous political campaigns.
- ↑ The five possible confidence scores were: Strong Democrat, Mild Democrat, Indeterminate, Mild Republican, and Strong Republican.
- ↑ The seven factors were party registration, donations made to partisan candidates, donations made to political parties, donations received from political parties or bodies with clear political affiliation, participation in political campaigns, the partisanship of the body responsible for appointing the justice, and state trifecta status when the justice joined the court.
- ↑ An Indeterminate score indicates that there is either not enough information about the justice’s partisan affiliations or that our research found conflicting partisan affiliations.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Wyoming Judicial Branch, About the Supreme Court, accessed April 17, 2025
- ↑ Wyoming Judicial Branch, "Judicial Nominating Commission," accessed April 17, 2025
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 American Judicature Society, "Methods of Judicial Selection: Wyoming," accessed August 11, 2021
- ↑ American Judicature Society, "Methods of Judicial Selection: Wyoming," archived January 13, 2012
Federal courts:
Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals • U.S. District Court: District of Wyoming • U.S. Bankruptcy Court: District of Wyoming
State courts:
Wyoming Supreme Court • Wyoming District Courts • Wyoming Circuit Courts • Wyoming Municipal Courts
State resources:
Courts in Wyoming • Wyoming judicial elections • Judicial selection in Wyoming
