Who Is Judge Pax Moultrie? Appointed by Polis in 2023, Rated 9-0, Retained Once Before in Denver, and on Every Douglas County Ballot This November

Pax Moultrie is a judge on the Colorado Court of Appeals, and her name is on every Douglas County ballot this fall with one question attached: shall she be retained in office? She has no opponent and does not campaign. Search traffic says a lot of people want to know her party, and the short answer is that judges here do not have one on the ballot. The longer answer, from the governor's announcement, the court's records, the Secretary of State and the volunteer commission that evaluated her, is below.

Who appointed her, and when

Gov. Jared Polis announced her appointment on Nov. 9, 2023, along with Grant Sullivan's, to fill two vacancies. She took the seat of Judge David Furman, whose retirement was effective Jan. 1, 2024, and the court's website lists that date as her appointment date. Colorado Politics reported it under the headline "Polis names first Black judge to Court of Appeals in 4 years," noting that the court's last Black member, Karen M. Ashby, had retired in 2019. She held her formal investiture on April 19, 2024.

Her two-year provisional term on this court ended this year, so this is her first retention vote as a Court of Appeals judge. It is not her first retention vote. In 2022, as a Denver district judge, she was retained by Denver voters 152,468 to 41,929, or 78.43 percent yes, according to the Secretary of State's official abstract. Douglas County voters did not see her name then; district judges appear only on their own district's ballots.

What she did before the bench

She spent most of her career in child welfare law. After graduating from Washington University in St. Louis in 2001 and the University of Denver's law school in 2006, and after clerkships in the 1st Judicial District and at the Colorado Supreme Court, she was an assistant county attorney representing human services departments in dependency and neglect and juvenile delinquency cases: Jefferson County from 2008 to 2011, then Arapahoe County from 2011 to 2018. She became a magistrate in Jefferson County in 2018, and in April 2020 Polis appointed her to the Denver bench, where she presided over the Juvenile Court's dependency and neglect, delinquency and adoption dockets.

The Denver commission that reviewed her in 2022 voted 9-0 that she met standards. It found she met the court's benchmark for finishing 90 percent of adoption and permanency cases within a year but missed, "by a small margin," the 95 percent benchmarks for delinquency and dependency cases, and recorded that all 11 attorneys and all 8 non-attorneys surveyed said she met standards.

What the performance commission found

The State Commission on Judicial Performance interviewed her, watched oral arguments, read a selection of her opinions, reviewed her self-evaluation and surveyed attorneys and judges. Its 2026 finding: she meets performance standards, 9-0, with one commissioner absent and one seat vacant.

The commission found "her opinions are thoughtful, accessible, and well written," said she "has an excellent judicial demeanor" at argument, and commended her work on "the judicial branch's well-being efforts to support judicial officers and employees" and on educating the public about the courts. Lawyers praised "her ability to write in plain language so that both lawyers and laypersons can understand her opinions." Fellow judges, the commission said, valued "the valuable perspective she brings as a former juvenile court judge." It called her "a valuable addition to the Court of Appeals."

"Her ability to write in plain language so that both lawyers and laypersons can understand her opinions." The State Commission on Judicial Performance, summarizing attorney comments, 2026.

The survey numbers

The contractor invited 354 attorneys and 253 judges; 9 attorneys and 27 judges answered, the largest response for any of the six Court of Appeals judges on this ballot. All 36 said she meets standards. Her overall score was 3.8 out of 4, after 4.0 in 2024 from seven respondents and 3.7 in 2025. Judges scored her 3.4 on issuing opinions in a timely manner, her lowest single item; everything else was 3.7 or higher from both groups.

Is she a Republican or a Democrat?

The ballot does not say, because Colorado judges do not run under a party label; the Douglas County sample ballot lists her with no party, no opponent and no statement. The governor who appointed her twice, Jared Polis, is a Democrat, and both times she was chosen from a short list sent to the governor by a judicial nominating commission. She has no platform or endorsements. The Douglas County Republican Party's online voter guide recommends retaining her, and we found no organized opposition to her and no news coverage of her rulings in the past two years beyond the court's routine opinion announcements. Her opinions are public in the Colorado Judicial Branch's opinion database; we have not reviewed a sample of them for this page and will not characterize them beyond what the commission wrote.

How to vote on her

She appears in the judicial retention section of the ballot with five other Court of Appeals judges and one Supreme Court justice. A "yes" keeps her for eight years; a "no" removes her at the end of this term and the governor appoints a replacement; a majority of the votes cast on the question decides it. Retention judges do not campaign, and we found no organized opposition to her. All thirteen judges on the Douglas County ballot drew a "meets standards" finding this year; our page on all thirteen has every narrative and vote count.

More: every race and measure on your ballot, the November ballot guide, and where to vote. We do not endorse candidates or take positions on judicial retention. Corrections to hello@discoverdougco.com.

*Election night: live results for every Douglas County race, measure and judge, with the first numbers after 7 p.m. on Nov. 3. Before then: where to vote in person, every drop box, and the deadlines, and who has voted so far.*