Judge Mary Kay Becker

DIVISION I, POSITION 5

January 18, 1994–January 13, 2019

Appointed by Governor Lowry; Retired

Mary Kay Becker was born in Aberdeen, Washington in the first wave of the post-war baby boom. She grew up next to the ocean in the Olympic National Park, where she worked at her family’s business at Kalaloch. She is a graduate of Lake Quinault High School and Stanford University. In 1965 she traveled throughout the South with other student journalists to interview civil rights workers for a project that produced historical materials now archived at Stanford.

Judge Becker has always been a writer in one form or another. A resident of Bellingham since 1969, she is the co-author of the book "Superspill". This fictional account of a major oil spill disaster on Puget Sound, published in 1973, helped to coalesce public support for a tanker ban. The people of the 42nd Legislative District elected her to the Washington State House of Representatives where she served from 1975 to 1983 while also studying for a law degree at the University of Washington and becoming, with attorney husband Bill Johnston, a parent of two children.

At various times during her years as a practicing attorney, Judge Becker was a member of the Whatcom County Council, a member of Washington’s first constitutional redistricting commission in 1991, and a member and chair of Western Washington University’s Board of Trustees. She was appointed to the Court of Appeals in January 1994 to replace retiring Judge Marshall Forrest. Thereafter, the voters in the four northwestern counties elected her to four full terms. She often thought of writing opinions as one more way of reporting the news. From retirement, Judge Becker looks back with enjoyment and pride on those years of hearing arguments and deciding cases with her colleagues on the court.