A court battle over the use of a judge’s middle name on the ballot is heating up a normally sedate Orange County judicial race, with one candidate accusing his opponent of “hiding behind a misleading name” and an attorney for an incumbent judge questioning whether she is being targeted for a “foreign-sounding name.”
Charles Pell, in a lawsuit filed against the Orange County Registrar of Voters, is challenging his opponent’s effort to appear on the ballot as “Ami S. Sagel” rather than her full name of Amy Sheth Sagel. Pell is challenging Sagel for the Orange County Superior Court judge position that Sagel currently holds.
Pell, a veteran federal prosecutor, alleges that Sagel is “attempting to appear on the June 2, 2026, primary ballot under a previously unused name that is not the one voters know,” contending that she has “for years been known professionally, publicly and judicially” as ‘Ami Sheth Sagel.”
Sagel, in her own court filings, counters that the “use of one’s proper middle initial is not misleading.” Sagel also alleged in court records that a decade ago, Pell advised a colleague “that the way to win a judicial election was to target judges with ‘f—-d up names,’ ” adding that “Ten years later, he is trying to take his own advice.”
County Registrar Bob Page’s office has not taken a side in the lawsuit but has asked for a prompt court decision in order for the office to get the county’s voter information guide printed and released on time.
The lawsuit was assigned to a San Bernardino judge to avoid any conflict of interest in the Orange County courts.
During a hearing Friday afternoon, Sagel’s attorney, Mark Rosen, told Superior Court Judge Wilfred J. Schneider Jr., “We think it’s an open-and-shut case” because there is no violation of election law …
“The candidate gets to choose which name is on the ballot, not the opponent,” as long as there is no intent to mislead, Rosen said.
“This is such a trivial lawsuit,” Rosen continued. “She is being picked on because she used a foreign-sounding name, and we can only wonder what the motivation is.”
Rosen later said outside court that he believes Orange County voters, who have elected lawmakers such as Rep. Young Kim and Rep. Dave Min, would not likely reject Sagel for her national origin.
Sheth is of Indian origin, Sagel said after the hearing. Her parents were born in the Asian country, she said.
Pell’s attorney, Bradley W. Hertz, told Judge Schneider that there was no racist intent behind their challenge to Sagel’s ballot designation.
“The name could be Jones or Smith or any other name,” Hertz said. “We believe the use of the name should be consistent.”
Pell, in an interview after the hearing, said he believes Sagel should use the name by which she is known as a judge: Amy Sheth Sagel. that’s how it is listed in the Orange County Superior Court judicial assignments.
Pell said he initially planned to stay retired.
“I still looked out there and I saw the opportunity,” Pell said. “She was one of the only ones that was recently appointed (2023). She had bad ratings (from people who appeared before her in Family Law Court). So that’s why I focused on her. Our whole argument is this: If you choose to invoke the position you have, judge of the Superior Court, then you should have to use that (name).”
There was also discussion about Pell’s ballot designation, which has been approved as Federal Criminal Prosecutor. Pell retired in September 2025
Hertz suggested a compromise: Pell would change his designation to retired federal prosecutor if Sagel would use her full name on the ballot.
“It’s not really splitting the baby,” Hertz told the judge. “It’s giving everybody a baby.”
Rosen rejected the offer.
Deputy Orange County Counsel Suzanne Shoai told Schneider that they needed the ruling by March 27. Schneider said he hoped to post his ruling online by Monday.
Pell and Sagel are both long-time members of the local legal community, who have crossed professional paths during tenures at the local U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Sagel was a federal prosecutor for five years before starting her own private legal practice and then being appointed as a judge in the Orange County Superior Court by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023.
Pell spent 20 years as a federal prosecutor, in recent years leading public corruption cases against former Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do and former Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu.
In response to Pell’s lawsuit, Sagel wrote in her own court filings that her maiden name is Ami Harshad Sheth, but that she took her husband’s last name when they were married in 2013. Her husband, Brett Sagel, is also a veteran federal prosecutor known for high-profile white-collar-crime cases who previously worked in the same U.S. Attorney’s Office as Pell.
Sagel wrote that she sometimes uses her full name — such as on legal documents — and sometimes uses Ami Sagel or Ami S. Sagel, “consistent with how all of us exercise control over how our names are rendered in different contexts.”
Pell — in contending that Sagel is using a “never-before-used variant” of her name “created solely for this election” — contends in his court filing that he wasn’t challenging a “minor formatting issue,” but instead arguing that “voters in a judicial race are entitled to accurate identifying information.” Pell accused Sagel of “running away from her record,” which he alleged “paints a picture of someone who doesn’t have a good temperament.”
Another former colleague of Pell’s in a written statement to the court submitted by Sagel recalls that in February 2016, Pell gave her the unsolicited advice that she should consider running for election against a sitting judge with “a f—-d up name.”
Sagel wrote that she was “deeply troubled” by Pell’s argument since she was “generally aware of the historic practice of highlighting a candidate’s foreign-sounding name as a disadvantage in elections and of placing at issue how a woman’s name should appear on a ballot.”
