Bree Black Horse at a glance
- Current role
- Judge
- Jurisdiction
- Washington · State
- Judicial service
- Active
Bree Black Horse
Judge · Yakima County - Superior Court
Bree Black Horse — Yakima County - Superior Court
Biography
Professional career
- Counsel at Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP
- Intern with the Office of Tribal Justice at the DOJ in Washington, D.C., and clerk for U.S. District Judge Brian M. Morris in the District of Montana
- The third judge in Washington to serve on a superior court bench and the first Native American in Yakima County’s history
- director and adjunct professor of law for Seattle University School of Law’s Central Washington Hybrid Hub, leading the Pipeline Initiative to expand legal education access in Central Washington
Education
- Seattle University School of Law — J.D.
Additional information
- Governor Bob Ferguson appointed Bree Black Horse to the Yakima County Superior Court on September 9, 2026, filling a newly created judgeship — the first added to the county since 1998 — in response to growing community demand for judicial services.
- Legal aid attorney and public defender for the Yakama Indian Nation.
- focusing on Native American affairs and litigation.
- Black Horse is a career litigator with over 12 years of experience in criminal and civil cases at federal, state, and Tribal levels.
- Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington, where she became the first regional prosecutor in the Northwest dedicated to Missing or Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) cases.
- She has prosecuted high-profile cases, including a defendant who shot at law enforcement (seeking a 198‐month federal sentence) and a murderer of a Yakama Nation woman for which she sought 25 years in federal prison.
- Bree Black Horse is an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and the first Native American judge appointed to the Yakima County Superior Court bench in Washington.
Published courtroom rules
Shared court rules
Washington GR 16, Courtroom Photography and Recording by the News Media
Yakima County - Superior Court
Scope is limited to the court class in the source claim. Shared court context only; case-type restrictions, exceptions, later amendments and case orders apply. This is not a personal preference or a complete rules inventory.
Official source ↗ · Collected 2026-07-26Sources
Biography sources checked October 11, 2026.
Judicial Appointments To Date
2026 State Judicial Appointments/Effective Dates source · HTML · Source checked October 6, 2026
View Judicial Appointments To Date ↗