Dan Kapelovitz for
Superior Court Judge
Los Angeles County Office No. 81
Endorsements
Green Party of Los Angeles County
Green Party Voter Guide – June 2, 2026
elections on the ballot in LA County
published Sun, 05/03/2026 – 22:42
(excerpt)
The Green Party of Los Angeles County organizes based upon the Green Party of California Platform and Ten Key Values – applying that platform and those values to issues in our local communities. We take positions on individual issues, as well as make endorsements of candidates and ballot measures that appear on the ballot in Los Angeles County.
Endorsed – Dan Kapelovitz,
Judge of the Superior Court, Office 81
JUDGE OF THE LA COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT
ENDORSEMENTS & RECOMMENDATIONS QUICK GUIDE
(excerpt)
About These Seats
We know, we know! This is why you are here!
Since 2020, La Defensa has been shedding light on judicial behavior and discretion in the LA County Superior Court through Rate My Judge LA and Court Watch LA. Our voter guide pays special attention to the judicial races because judges have enormous day-to-day power over the lives of people in our community: they set or deny bail, determine whether someone will be released pretrial or sit in jail, decide sentences, grant or deny resentencing petitions, and decide whether to offer diversion and treatment rather than incarceration. They also have the authority to dismiss cases where prosecutorial or police misconduct is established, and to grant Racial Justice Act motions where racially biased enforcement is proven.
Los Angeles Superior Court is the largest trial court system in the United States, handling criminal, civil, family, juvenile, and traffic cases for a county of more than 10 million people. Superior Court judges serve six-year terms and are elected by county voters.
Our Vetting Criteria
Although we did not sponsor a cohort of Defenders of Justice candidates as we have in past cycles, we developed a comprehensive questionnaire and conducted interviews with each candidate through our endorsement committee.
Judicial candidates are constrained in their ability to take explicit policy positions by the California Canons of Judicial Ethics, so our process was designed accordingly.
We asked candidates about their professional background and prior experience representing or working alongside communities most impacted by the criminal legal system; their personal connections to the carceral system; their sources of campaign funding and community endorsements; and their motivations for seeking this seat.
On the substance of judging, we asked how they would approach pretrial detention and cash bail; what weight they would give to the real-world consequences of incarceration before any finding of guilt; how they would apply judicial discretion in the face of mandatory minimums and sentencing enhancements; how they would address implicit bias and the documented racial disparities in the Los Angeles court system; how they would handle algorithm-based risk assessment tools; how they would protect the rights and dignity of immigrants, trans and gender-nonconforming individuals, and young people appearing before them; and how they would respond to prosecutorial or police misconduct raised by the defense.
We also asked about their vision for restorative justice and what they would do to make their courtroom more accessible and less intimidating to the communities that have historically been most harmed by it. We endorsed candidates based on their responses to our questionnaire and performance on an interview with our endorsement committee.
OFFICE NO. 81
Dan Kapelovitz
✅ Endorsed
Ballot Designation
Criminal Defense Attorney
Incumbent Opposition’s RMJ Score
David B. Walgren does not have a rating
Background
Kapelovitz is a criminal defense attorney whose practice is almost entirely devoted to representing indigent defendants with conflicts of interest with public defender offices, approximately 90% of whom are people of color. He has served as a volunteer professor at the People’s College of Law, teaching Evidence, Criminal Procedure, and a Criminal Law Clinic, and has represented political protesters pro bono and conducted Know Your Rights training for activists. He has mentored law students under the Law Office Study Program, including two formerly incarcerated students, one of whom passed the Bar Exam on her first attempt. He ran for Governor in the 2021 recall election, for Attorney General, and for District Attorney, running each time to raise awareness about conditions inside Los Angeles courthouses. He is not a registered Democrat and does not accept donations from attorneys, law enforcement, corporations, or PACs of any kind, stating that attorney donations represent an inherent conflict of interest for a judicial candidate. This is his most recent in a series of progressive judicial candidacies.
Public Safety Platform
La Defensa is proud to endorse Dan Kapelovitz for Judge Of The Superior Court Office No. 81. He believes all defendants should be released on their own recognizance unless there is truly clear and convincing evidence that they are a genuine danger to the community. He states: “Cash bail creates a two-tiered system of justice: one for the rich and one for the poor,” and opposes using bail determinations as a pretext to detain people who cannot pay. He describes his opponent as illegally and immorally raising the bail of defendants who had been released on lower bail with no change of circumstances. On sentencing, he views judicial discretion as the most important tool available to a judge and argues that “the safest thing for a judge to do is impose the maximum punishment but this is not the right thing to do in most cases.” He states risk assessment algorithms can replicate and amplify racial bias in the same way many judges already do, and would not use them. He is explicit that courts should never cooperate with ICE, noting that defendants, witnesses, and alleged victims already fear coming to court due to ICE’s courthouse presence. He supports granting Racial Justice Act motions when warranted, stating that most judges are afraid to grant them even when they lawfully should. He would impose meaningful remedies for prosecutorial and police misconduct, stating these issues must be taken much more seriously than they currently are. He supports diversion and treatment over incarceration for drug offenses, and strongly opposes prosecuting minors as adults based on what brain development science has established. He would step off the bench physically to speak with people in the courtroom at the same level rather than from above. His vision is systemic: “There are too many reforms that need to be made to fix our broken criminal justice system.”
Judge of the Superior Court
In Los Angeles, judges are elected to six-year terms in countywide races, which in a county of 10 million people ensures that no candidate can reach more than the tiniest fraction of the electorate. This means that incumbents are impossible to beat unless they’re up to their necks in scandal, and even then a judicial PAC protects even the most loathsome among them. Judicial hopefuls go to war over the open seats — futures are often decided by a game of musical chairs at the County Registrar, leaving a lucky few running unopposed. This is obviously a great system and a credit to democracy.
Finding meaningful information about the candidates also poses an enormous challenge. Your average campaign website has a list of endorsements, some vague language about fairness and the law, and a smiling photo of a person in a suit. That’s why we’re here. Our recommendations are based on dozens of conversations with progressive lawyers and organizers.
Part of the purpose of this guide is to push back against the biases built into what little information is available. The Bar Association, for example, rates candidates on their “qualifications” in a manner that privileges prosecutorial experience over defense or civil work. In the race for Seat 64, for example, they rated Public Defender Haymon as only “qualified” with 26 years of experience, and District Attorney Ghobadi as “well qualified” with 17.
Many other publications also fall for the fiction that “nonpartisan” judicial races are politically neutral. The police unions certainly don’t believe that; they endorse the judges they think will be most friendly to an agenda of criminalization and imprisonment. We also see the intervention of groups like the Crime Survivors PAC, a Trumpist Republican group that prospective judges list proudly on their websites. Even without those extremes, there is a meaningful difference between a judiciary made up of white male ex-DAs and one with a diversity of cultural, class, and professional backgrounds.
Seat 81: Dan Kapelovitz
Kapelovitz is a genuine old-school radical lawyer, steadfast in his commitment to transformative change in the system. He touts his commitment to the working class and a decade plus of a practice focused on low-income clients, with a particular pro-bono lane related to animal rights.
He’s running against incumbent Judge Walgren who, unlike other incumbents mentioned in this guide, is not currently facing any disciplinary action. Even though it would have been an easier road for Kapelovitz in another seat, we give him our recommendation. If we’re going to be choosing judges by election the scope of that pool should be expanded as much as possible.