Abortion, Voting Rights, Gerrymandering: What’s at Stake in 2024 Supreme Court Races

The general election in November won’t just decide who runs the country or joins Congress. Judges and lawyers across the nation are vying for a seat on their state’s high court, a powerful role that can shape public policy statewide.

While most Supreme Court races in the U.S. aren’t partisan, meaning candidates aren’t required to affiliate with a political party, seven states are holding court elections this November in which voters will elect a Democrat or Republican to their state’s highest court.

In Ohio and Michigan, the election could determine whether Republicans or Democrats have court majorities, which could have a lasting impact on issues like voting rights, gerrymandering and other constitutional matters. In North Carolina, Alabama and Texas, which are either mostly or completely Republican, Democrats are running to add more ideological diversity to the courts. 

In the wake of significant U.S. Supreme Court rulings rolling back federal abortion rights and undermining the fight for fair representation, more eyes are on state courts to establish and maintain individual rights at the state level. 

In Wisconsin, for example, which will hold state Supreme Court elections in 2025, its 2023 race became the most expensive judicial race in the nation’s history. Abortion rights and gerrymandering were central to liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz’s platform. And after her victory, the newly-liberal court overturned a prohibition on drop boxes, a 2022 decision reached by the court’s then-conservative majority.

“The current environment that we’re dealing with in state Supreme Court races is not a partisan environment as much as it is a democracy versus authoritarian paradigm,” said John Bisognano, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC).

The organization, which advocates for fair representation in electoral maps, endorsed a number of Democratic candidates in races Bisognano describes as a fight to protect democratic values.

“Republicans used to be significantly more comfortable with the idea of democracy,” Bisognano said, “and obviously we’ve seen a dramatic shift in that reality.” He added his group is committed to endorsing candidates who have exemplified a strong focus on preserving democracy in their states.  

Michigan

In Michigan, general elections for state Supreme Court seats are nonpartisan. But the nominees are chosen at Democratic or Republican party conventions. Last month, Michigan Republicans nominated Circuit Court Judge Patrick O’Grady and state Rep. Andrew Fink. Democrats nominated University of Michigan law professor Kimberly Thomas and Michigan Justice Kyra Harris Bolden.

Bolden is running to keep her seat and maintain the seven-member court’s 4-3 Democratic majority. Bolden was appointed to the bench by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to fill a vacancy in 2022, and became the first Black woman in Michigan’s history to sit on the state’s high court. The other seat is being vacated by conservative Justice David Viviano, who is retiring from the bench.

In July, the NDRC, led by chairman and former Attorney General Eric Holder, endorsed Bolden, stating the justice “has repeatedly demonstrated an unwavering commitment to equal treatment under the law for all Michiganders.” Thomas is running for Viviano’s open seat.

Control of Michigan’s court could have major implications for democracy — and not just for Michiganders. Among the 41 decisions the court issued in its 2023-2024 term is a recent ruling allowing Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) to largely reinstate a set of 2022 rules governing the behavior of partisan election challengers. In December of last year, the court affirmed a lower court decision allowing former President Donald Trump to remain on the ballot and declined to review the question of whether Trump is allegedly ineligible under the 14th Amendment’s Insurrection Clause.

Ohio

While Democrats want to keep their majority on Michigan’s high court, Democrats in Ohio are seeking to break the seven-member court’s 4-3 Republican majority. Democratic Justices Michael P. Donnell and Melody Stewart are running to keep their seats, while state appellate court judge Lisa Forbes (D) and Franklin County Judge Dan Hawkins (R) are running for a third open seat.

Like its counterparts across the nation, Ohio’s high court plays a vital role in reviewing and deciding cases about gerrymandering, a key issue in the Buckeye State. The high court’s Republican majority last year dismissed three lawsuits that challenged the state’s legislative maps for allegedly being extreme partisan gerrymanders, leaving the disputed districts in place for 2024. 

In 2021, Ohio lawmakers made state Supreme Court and appellate court races partisan. The move was controversial, with Ohio Justice Jennifer Brunner suing state officials over the law last year. Brunner argued the law places appellate-level judges and justices “in positions to be viewed by the public as partisan.”

It’s a dilemma many candidates find themselves in as they campaign for seats without the advantage, generally, of being forthcoming about where they stand on policy. Party affiliation typically gives voters at least a vague sense of what a legislator wants to accomplish, but a jurist is expected to remain impartial.

Additionally, the partisan label often relegates judicial candidates to “down-ballot” positions, meaning voters may be less inclined to learn more about their platforms, especially when faced with options for U.S. president and Congress, according to University of Dayton law professor Nick Seger.

“I don’t think it helps to add Democrat or Republican to the ballot itself because a lot of people just don’t know who they’re voting for,” Seger said. “And so as a proxy, it’s not a very good one.”

Texas

In Texas, there’s a similar debate over whether such races should be partisan. This year, Democrats are running for three open seats on the nine-member Texas Supreme Court. Unlike most states, Texas’s high court only deals with civil matters and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals hears criminal cases. 

A Democrat hasn’t sat on the Texas court since 1998. Earlier this year, conservative Justice John Devine, who’s running to keep his seat, made headlines when he was heard implying at an event that Democrats will steal the election from Trump, underscoring how judges’ political views can raise concerns about their conduct on and off the court.

While a Democrat winning wouldn’t break up the majority, even if all three candidates won, it would add more democratic voices to a court that last year allowed Texas legislators to pass a law that eliminated the appointed election administrator position in Texas counties with a population of 3.5 million or more. 

“As folks become more keenly aware of the potency of state Supreme Courts, I think they’re going to have a significantly greater awareness and focus on those elections, “Bisognano said. “We’re talking about democracy, but that can transcend to a host of other issues including abortion rights, where we’ve seen Texas and Arizona Supreme Courts [issue] rulings that are dramatically outside their purview and also [outside] the will of the voters in that state.”

Seger advised voters to evaluate the experience candidates would bring to the court, not their partisan views. “One of the great things we do in the federal system, and to some degree in the state systems, is that we poll local attorneys to determine whether those attorneys believe that this person is qualified,” Seger said.

He added this gives voters the perspectives of people who’ve actually interacted with judicial candidates. “Do they believe that they’re fair and balanced? Do they believe that they actually decide the cases on the merits?” I think that’s the best way — outside of reading all of the opinions, which nobody has time to do — to see a summary of what practicing attorneys really think about a particular judge.”

North Carolina

Similarly in North Carolina, the state Supreme Court has just two Democrats. Justice Allison Riggs is running to keep her seat on the 5-2 majority-conservative court. 

Riggs has witnessed the impact of the court both as a justice and a voting rights attorney. In 2022, Riggs helped argue the redistricting case Harper v. Hall for Common Cause, which challenged the state’s legislative and congressional maps. The court’s then-Democratic majority struck down the maps for being partisan gerrymanders in violation of the North Carolina Constitution.

“I thought it was the right decision, and it was one that was important for our democracy,” Riggs said.

But after the court’s majority flipped to Republican control, the court almost immediately reversed the decision, ruling that partisan gerrymandering claims are not justiciable under the state constitution.

Riggs said she completely agreed with Democratic Justice Anita Earls’ dissent in the case. Earls, among other things, wrote that the court’s reversal “tells North Carolinians that the state constitution and the courts cannot protect their basic human right to self-governance and self-determination.”

“My perception on the campaign trail is that a vast majority of voters view that as rank partisan action,” Riggs said. “I have heard how devastating that was to people’s faith in the judicial system, in any sort of belief that the judicial system was less political.”

Riggs, who was appointed to serve on the high court in September of 2023, said she joined the court in part to help voters better understand the judiciary.

“It’s not our job, per se, to police gerrymandering,” she said. “It is our job to stand up for the Constitution and recognize that the Constitution is worth more than the piece of paper that it’s written on. It is like the safeguard of our democracy and every person in the state’s individual rights and liberties.”

Read about more democracy-related ballot initiatives that are up for a vote this November.