The nonpartisan Pennsylvania Bar Association is supporting all three justices for retention.<\/p>\n
And Democratic Party officials, including Pennsylvania\u2019s popular governor, Josh Shapiro, have lined up to back them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve proven we can count on them to protect a woman\u2019s access to abortion and birth control and stand up for all our freedoms,\u201d Shapiro said in a video ad. \u201cVote yes for a Supreme Court that protects us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abortion rights have taken the lead in the pro-retention campaign, as the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s 2022 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade has put the power of deciding abortion access into the states\u2019 hands. The political arm of Planned Parenthood is supporting the judges with a six-figure mailer campaign.<\/p>\n
Pennsylvania\u2019s Constitution requires state Supreme Court justices to run in partisan elections to win a seat. Then they are subject to a retention vote every ten years. On the back of this year\u2019s municipal election ballots, voters will see a simple \u201cYes\u201d or \u201cNo\u201d choice for each justice, asking whether to keep them on the bench.<\/p>\n
Judges elected as Democrats hold a 5-2 majority on the court over their Republican counterparts.<\/p>\n
READ:\u00a0Advocates urge depoliticization, \u2018Yes\u2019 vote for Pa. Supreme Court justices\u2019 retention<\/a><\/p>\n Unprecedented attention<\/p>\n State supreme court elections used to be quiet affairs. A Supreme Court justice hasn\u2019t lost retention in the commonwealth since Russell Nigro in 2005, and political analysts widely regard his removal as attributable to voter anger over a pay raise passed by the General Assembly earlier that year.<\/p>\n But as donors and activists realize just how many decisions state supreme court justices make on issues from education and voting access to abortion and labor law, these races have grown louder.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a successful no vote in a retention election in Oklahoma last year (and) in Illinois back in 2020, so these races are getting more attention in this polarized environment,\u201d said political scientist Stephen Medvic, of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk attempted, but failed, to flip the liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.<\/p>\n Medvic\u2019s colleague, Berwood Yost, is the director of F&M\u2019s Center for Opinion Research, which polled voters on Pennsylvania\u2019s retention election.<\/p>\n Yost and his researchers found Democrats largely said they\u2019d vote in favor of the justices, while Republicans leaned toward opposing them. Yost\u2019s poll also showed that half of the respondents were undecided.<\/p>\n \u201cDespite the importance that our courts play, normally most voters don\u2019t even turn out,\u201d Yost said, noting odd-year elections typically draw about one-third of registered voters to the polls. \u201cI think it’s going to be higher this year because of the spending.\u201d<\/p>\n More than $8 million had either been spent or was committed to be spent on the retention question as of mid-October. Medvic and Yost agree that\u2019s a record for a retention election in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n READ:\u00a0The group behind a misleading mailer targeting the Pa. Supreme Court retention elections<\/a><\/p>\n What\u2019s the message?<\/p>\n The \u201cno\u201d campaign is spending big on mailers and digital ads painting the justices as too \u201cradical,\u201d highlighting a range of past rulings from ones that upheld the state\u2019s mail-in ballots to the court\u2019s support for government-ordered lockdowns during COVID.<\/p>\n State Republican Party Chair Greg Rothman, a Cumberland County state senator, claims the judges\u2019 rulings were politically charged.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think judges should be judges, and legislators should legislate, and that the courts should not be making the laws or inserting themselves into public policy where the Legislature could act instead,\u201d Rothman said.<\/p>\n During the justices\u2019 forum in Philadelphia, Donohue stressed their independence from party affiliations after they\u2019re first elected.<\/p>\n \u201cOur personal views, our political views, our religious views, are left on the wayside,\u201d Donohue said.<\/p>\n Ads funded by Pennsylvania\u2019s richest man, Jeffrey Yass, criticize the judges\u2019 2018 ruling that forced a redrawing of the state\u2019s congressional map.<\/p>\n Wecht took particular issue with those ads when asked at the forum.<\/p>\n \u201cWe took away a prized possession of some highly partisan actors in our system who had created a flamboyantly gerrymandered map,\u201d Wecht said.<\/p>\n The 2018 ruling resulted in a new map chosen by the state Supreme Court that reversed the number of Republican members of the U.S. House from 13 to 9. Following gains in 2024, Republicans currently outnumber Democrats in the House delegation, 10 to 7.<\/p>\n The mention of the redistricting ruling in this year\u2019s retention campaign comes amid a nationwide push, prompted by Trump but eliciting a responding movement from Democrats, to redraw their congressional maps to politically benefit whichever party has majority control of the state government.<\/p>\n Pennsylvania\u2019s divided Legislature has prevented such a redistricting fight in the commonwealth this year.<\/p>\n READ:\u00a0How decisions made by Pa.\u2019s highest court shape rural communities<\/a><\/p>\n Losing their seats<\/p>\n If a justice loses retention, then the governor would appoint a replacement to fill that seat until the next odd-year election. Any appointee would need the Republican-led Senate\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n A loss from all three justices would leave the court tied between two liberal and two conservative judges. Yost and Medvic predicted that the outcome could stall the court for years, anticipating that Shapiro and Senate GOP leadership would disagree on nominees.<\/p>\n Shapiro, Senate Republicans and House Democrats are in the middle of a months-long budget impasse with no end in sight.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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