After a bruising Presidential election and a slew of fights over control of Congress and the state legislature, maybe you thought 2025 would at least be largely free of bitterly partisan election battles.
Don’t get your hopes up.
Pennsylvania voters will decide next year whether three sitting state Supreme Court justices should remain on the bench for another 10-year term. Those retention votes usually get little attention — but observers say they could become yet another partisan battleground.
“We want to capitalize on the momentum that we have created in Pennsylvania,” said Scott Presler, who leads a Republican voter-registration and get-out-the-vote group called Early Vote Action. Donald Trump’s win in the state shows that “we're winners,” he said. “I think you're going to see the Republican Party, even nationally, getting more involved in those state [Supreme Court] races.”
The three justices whose retention will be decided on next year’s ballot — Christine Donahue, Kevin Dougherty and David Wecht — helped swing the court into the Democrats’ column a decade ago. Democrats currently hold a 5-2 advantage on the court, so voting down all three could set the table for Republican control.
“My ultimate goal is to have the voters of Pennsylvania elect three Republican justices,” said Presler, whose ongoing voter-registration effort is helping chip away at a Democratic registration advantage.
Democrats say they are preparing for the fight.
“I really believe the retention races are going to dominate attention in the election cycle next year,” said Mitch Kates, the executive director of the state Democratic Party. From the GOP side, he said, "I can imagine they will create boogeymen and do all that awful stuff. They'll say it's a hyperpartisan court, but this court has ruled in the fairest of all ways."
Deborah Gross, who leads the judicial education group Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, said she’s already heard of conservative plans to attack the three justices. The organization is generally skeptical of choosing judges by popular vote, but Gross said that the current court is “pretty robust. … They do a good job of really getting rid of the politics, focusing on the issues.”
Only one Pennsylvania state justice has failed a retention vote. In 2005, Democrat Russell Nigro was a casualty of voter anger over a legislative pay raise that the court had upheld in the face of a challenge. And since 2015, the state’s Supreme Court races have been carried out with comparatively little rancor: Republicans Sally Mundy and Keith Brobson were elected in 2017 and 2021, respectively; Democrat Daniel McCaffery joined them after winning a race last year.
But in recent years, Supreme Court races have drawn national attention and huge sums of spending, especially in swing states like Wisconsin and North Carolina.
A handful of justices can, after all, have an outsized effect on a slew of crucial issues. Elizabeth Stelle, the policy director for the conservative Commonwealth Foundation, noted the court has a huge role on issues like state efforts to limit greenhouse gases.
“This issue is kind of a litmus test for voters because it really helps people distinguish where the justices land on this question of ‘how far should the government go in terms of manipulating or interfering in the economy?’” Stelle said.
Conservatives have a number of grievances with court decisions in recent years, including rulings to uphold COVID business restrictions opposed by Republicans and to back an executive order that facilitated unionizing home health aides.
And the stakes have only gotten higher since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court has removed federal protections for abortion rights and put the question in the hands of the states. Groups like Planned Parenthood Advocacy say that new threats to abortion rights will inspire voters to keep the three Democratic justices.
“We need to elect champions up and down the ballot to ensure that abortion is protected in the state of Pennsylvania,” said Signe Espinoza, who leads the group’s Pennsylvania chapter.
This year’s abortion referendums in Maryland, Arizona, Colorado proved voters around the country still support reproductive rights protections. And while Pennsylvania is currently led by a Democratic governor who supports abortion rights, that can change, and the state Supreme Court issued a ruling earlier this year that, though not conclusive, strongly suggests it will uphold enduring legal protections for abortion under the state constitution.
Adam Garber, executive director of gun-reform group CeaseFirePA, said that while his group hasn’t taken a position on retention, “Having judges who are evaluating and really empowering communities to keep their loved ones safe is going to be very important.”
The court’s Democratic majority has not been a guarantee that causes like Garber’s will come out on top. The court recently dealt a blow to local efforts to regulate firearms, and its rulings on mail-in ballot procedures have sometimes aggravated those on the left. When some county election officials decided to count ballots whose envelopes weren’t properly dated this fall, Republicans including Scott Presler himself cited the state Supreme Court’s decision to denounce the move.
But Presler still seems intent on ousting the justices in question. ”The biggest hurdle is educating people on the importance of these Supreme Court races and continuing to activate people and have them vote every single year,” he said.
Kates, of the state Democrats, acknowledged that Democrats and their allies “aren't going to get every ruling that you want, but that's what a fair and balanced court looks like.”
He praised the court for reviving a legal effort to overhaul state funding of public schools, and for a ruling that essentially rewrote the rules for drawing Congressional boundaries. Kates credited the decision for having “ended gerrymandering in Pennsylvania,” and once it was handed down, Pennsylvania’s delegation in the U.S. House went from a lopsided 13-5 Republican majority to an even 9-9 split.
Back in 2015, a constellation of Democratic groups rallied behind their judicial slate, with huge sums of money being spent by labor unions and trial lawyers’ groups, particular in Philadelphia.
Kates said such groups are likely to be in the mix again. But the retention fight may also attract conservative activists like Presler and, potentially, funders like Pennsylvania hedge-fund billionaire Jeff Yass.
In any case, Kates said, “It’s going to be a high-stakes election cycle.”
