Columbus, Ohio — It has been nearly forty years since liberal-leaning justices held a majority on the Ohio Supreme Court.
Democrats hope this is the year that changes, in a campaign that begins to take shape with Tuesday’s primaries. They will choose a candidate who will compete for an open seat on a court that will be at the center of battles over redistricting, public education, health care, environmental issues and criminal justice.
But it’s abortion that Democrats hope will be a game changer in a state that has moved from centrist to reliably Republican over the past decade. The Ohio Supreme Court is expected to shape how a voter-approved constitutional amendment that enshrined reproductive rights in the state constitution will be implemented.
“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that reproductive freedom and access to abortion are at stake in this race for the Supreme Court,” said Kellie Copeland, executive director of Pro-Choice Ohio.
It will be a big year for Supreme Court seats across the country, including 80 seats in 33 states. Ohio is one of the few states where it is possible for voters to reverse partisan control of their Supreme Court, and already activists and the major parties are preparing for an intense and expensive campaign.
Democrats will defend two seats on the Ohio court this year, with a third seat open. Only the open seat, where two Democrats are campaigning for the right to face a Republican judge in November, has a competitive primary.
They would need to win all three races in the fall to reverse the Court’s 4-3 majority. That’s a tall order in a state where Republicans hold every office in the entire state, have a supermajority in the legislature and have voted convincingly for Donald Trump for president twice.
But Ohio Democrats see a possible path to breaking the Republican Party’s longstanding lock on all three branches of state government. In November, the amendment, which enshrines an individual’s right to make decisions about reproductive health care – including abortion, miscarriage care, contraception and IVF – won with 57% support.
“Voters may not realize that even if they pass this abortion rights amendment, these fights over existing abortion laws are all still ongoing in the legal system, and that the Ohio Supreme Court has the power to interpret the amendment as they see fit ,” Jessie said. Hill, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, who has consulted with advocates of the amendment, known as Issue 1. “That’s an enormous amount of power.”
Aaron Baer, president of the Center for Christian Virtue in Ohio, said the court’s partisan makeup will largely determine how the amendment is implemented.
“We just passed an amendment that says we cannot pass abortion restrictions until there is viability,” said Baer, who served on the board of Protect Women Ohio, the Issue 1 opposition campaign. “But are you going to do well? Will we see judges adopt this amendment and try to push a California agenda on Ohioans?
Supreme Court races across the country have become increasingly expensive in recent years. More than $42 million was spent in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race last year, nearly triple the previous record for any state Supreme Court race. A Democratic-backed judge from Milwaukee won that race, giving liberals control of the court with the fate of the state’s abortion ban hanging in the balance.
Former Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper said the party’s success in Wisconsin bolsters its hopes in lawsuits across the country — especially in Ohio, where party control is at stake.
“I used to have to beg people at the national level to understand why these races mattered at the Supreme Court,” he said. “After Wisconsin, these are no longer hidden, low-interest campaigns.”
He said the races began to gain more attention after the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended the constitutional right to abortion and returned the issue to the states.
In Michigan, where Democrats have a four-to-three majority on the court, one Democrat and one Republican incumbent are running for election this year, albeit without party labels. The minimum wage and clean energy targets are among the central issues there.
In Ohio, Republicans have controlled a majority of the state Supreme Court since 1986. The court has served as the final arbiter on disputed laws passed by the GOP supermajority in the legislature and signed by Republican governors, as well as on Republican-controlled redistricting decisions. Commission.
The committee’s votes led to a lengthy legal dispute in which the court repeatedly declared its maps unconstitutionally gerrymandered. After that fight, a bipartisan coalition is collecting signatures for a constitutional amendment in November that would remove politicians from Ohio’s map-making process. Their campaign could elevate redistricting to another key issue in the Supreme Court cases this fall.
Tuesday’s primary features two Democrats, 8th District Court of Appeals Judge Lisa Forbes and Judge Terri Jamison, a 10th District Court of Appeals judge who ran for office two years ago and lost. The winner will face Republican Dan Hawkins, a judge on the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, for the only open seat.
During a recent candidates forum, both Democrats hinted at how important it could be to have a Democratic majority on the court to interpret laws coming from a legislature that has been gerrymandered to give Republicans a supermajority.
Forbes, who has received the endorsement of the state Democratic Party, said she was motivated to run to ensure the court would serve as an effective firewall.
“One of the things that concerns me is that you hear legislators openly talking about trying to prevent the implementation or circumvention of passed laws – the constitutional amendment that the citizens of Ohio overwhelmingly passed – and that concerns me concerns about our democracy. ‘ she said. “When people speak, it is the legislators’ job to do their will.”
At the same event, Jamison said Ohio’s judiciary is an independent branch of government that should never submit to the legislature.
“We are not secondary to them,” she said.
Forbes, Jamison and Hawkins are seeking the seat currently held by Republican Judge Joseph Deters, after Deters opted to challenge Democratic Judge Melody Stewart for her seat this fall. The decision allows Deters to seek a seat on the court that runs until 2030, four years longer than his current term.
In the third contest, incumbent Judge Michael Donnelly, a Democrat, will face a challenge from Republican Megan Shanahan, a Hamilton County Common Pleas Court judge, in November.
Deters’ move could increase Democrats’ vulnerability and even allow Republicans to gain more seats on the Supreme Court than they already have. The former state treasurer and district attorney shares Stewart’s incumbency advantage but could benefit from Ohio’s conservative political leanings: Republicans represent roughly 54% of the electorate, compared to Democrats’ 46%.
Party affiliation now matters in Ohio court cases, thanks to a Republican-backed 2021 law that requires judicial candidates to run for office with party labels.
Ryan Stubenrauch, a Republican consultant for Shanahan’s campaign, said Ohio’s conservative-leaning politics will make it difficult for Democrats to win a lawsuit involving party labels. He also said that abortion already appears to have faded as a major campaign issue.
“It would be the hope and prayer of Democrats to turn the Supreme Court race and every other race in Ohio into an abortion-centric race,” he said. “To me that seems extremely unlikely because voters feel like abortion is the #1 issue and enough time will have passed that the concern will have been forgotten.
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