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For 17 years Byrne personally handled every foster-care case in Travis County — every child, every hearing — and built a court that the rest of the country came to study. Now she runs the appeals court that hears Hays County's cases, and she wants to keep running it.
She spent 20 years as a district judge in Austin, founded the county's family drug-treatment court and a docket for kids caught between foster care and juvenile justice, and was named Judge of the Year by CASA — nationally and in Texas. Elected to the 3rd Court of Appeals in 2020, she's now its Chief Justice, and under her the court became all-women for the first time in its history. Her opponent, Cory Liu, was appointed to a district court by Abbott last December and has never won an election. When the State Bar polled the lawyers who practice in front of this court, they picked her almost four to one.
