In Win for Democracy in Pennsylvania, Dems Retain Majority on Supreme Court

Three Democratic justices on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court have all won another 10-year term in a high-stakes retention election that saw a major GOP push to reshape the state’s highest court. 

The results mean Democrats can continue to use their majority on the court to protect voting rights and fight GOP gerrymandering and election subversion.

Voters approved another term for the three justices and Democrats will hold their 5-2 majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for at least another decade. 

If the justices had not been retained, it could have allowed Republicans to flip control of the state’s highest court in 2027, which could have had major implications right before the next presidential election. As a result, GOP-aligned groups and megadonors launched a well-funded, misleading campaign to convince voters not to allow the three justices to serve another term. And Democrats spent millions of dollars to counter the GOP’s effort — making it one of the costliest judicial elections in the state’s history.

Since the court flipped to Democratic control in 2015, it has issued a string of rulings that, together, have gone a long way to protect fair elections in the state. 

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump’s multiple attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss. In 2018, the court’s majority struck down a Republican gerrymander, which at the time was one of the most egregious in the country. And the majority upheld the state’s no-excuse mail-in voting law in 2022, which protected access to the ballot box for some 8.7 million registered voters. 

If Republicans gained a majority on the court, they could have reversed those rulings and used other voting or redistricting cases to jeopardize fair elections in the Keystone State.

Voters reportedly received misleading mailers in September claiming that “the liberal Supreme Court gerrymandered our congressional districts to help Democrats win,” accompanied by a photo of an outdated congressional map from 2011 — which the current state Supreme Court tossed out in 2018 as a Republican gerrymander. 

The mailer, along with others that peddled disinformation to voters about the contentious election, was paid for by a PAC with ties to Jeff Yass — a Pennsylvania billionaire who has a long history of using his immense wealth to fund far-right political causes in his home state.

There was a significant GOP push to register voters in Pennsylvania, with prominent conservative influencer and election conspiracy theorist Scott Presler campaigning in the state. 

At a Republican state party meeting in Harrisburg in June, Presler reportedly led a training on voter registration with an eye on the upcoming vote.

“They allowed Gov. Wolf to shut down Pennsylvania during COVID. Dougherty, Donohue, Wecht did that,” Presler told the state GOP meeting. “They also allowed mail-in ballots to come three days after Election Day. If you want justice and you want accountability, then you vote ‘no’ to these people. If we get a simple majority vote, you will remove three Democrats from the Supreme Court in one single election. That has never been done.”

Presler and the GOP’s efforts didn’t pay off and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will hold a Democratic majority for at least another decade. 

“Tonight, Pennsylvania delivered a message on behalf of the entire country: No matter how rich you are, and no matter how much power you think you might have, our courts are not for sale. Make no mistake: Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht’s victories are a major win for fair elections, reproductive rights, voting rights, and democracy,” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said in a press release. “As much as it must piss off right-wing billionaires like Jeff Yass, Pennsylvania families deserve to know that their Supreme Court is independent, not in someone’s pocket. Tonight has proved that, at every level of government, Democrats are competing, winning, and building power on behalf of the American people.”