Coming to a neighborhood near you: yard signs telling you to vote “yes” to retain three state Supreme Court justices or “no” to oust them.
Pennsylvania Republicans are asking voters this November to vote against retaining the trio. Democrats want them to vote “yes” for those three justices, who were elected as Democrats: Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht.
The court now has a 5-2 Democratic majority.
Democrats and Republicans, as well as special interest groups, are running ads on television and the internet to make their cases to voters on whether to remove or retain the justices for another 10-year term. Democrats call the justices “nonpartisan.”
“These three liberal justices have spent years advancing the left’s agenda from the bench, and their defeat would spur a seismic momentum shift in Pennsylvania that would create an opening for more conservative policy victories in the state,” said Mason DiPalma, communications director for the Republican State Leadership Committee, which is funding some digital ads. “These races will also shape the redistricting process for the next cycles to come, determining whether Democrats can continue to gerrymander legislative and congressional maps in their favor. The stakes are high and we know this will be an uphill battle, which is why it’s essential that more conservatives get engaged in this fight down the stretch.”
Pennsylvania GOP Chairman Greg Rothman said, “These three Supreme Court justices shut down our commonwealth during COVID. They devastated small businesses, schools, and churches, and set back our children’s education. They’ve made blatantly partisan decisions, including allowing mail-in ballots to be counted days after an election. Now, they want another decade on the bench?
“Saquon Barkley is the best player in the NFL, and even he doesn’t get a 10-year contract,” Rothman added. “The voters of Pennsylvania need to impose term limits on these judges, and this November, that’s exactly what they’ll do. We urge voters to vote ‘no’ on all three Supreme Court justices up for retention.”
“There’s never been a retention campaign quite like the one we are in now. It’s the residue of the hard-fought Supreme Court elections of 2015, which Democrats dominated. Now Republicans can vote ‘no’ and begin the effort of rebalancing the court,” said longtime Republican consultant Christopher Nicholas, CEO of Eagle Consulting.
But by most accounts, Republicans will have a tough sell to expel the justices.
“It is extremely rare for a retention election to result in the ousting of a judge. This apparently has only happened once for the Supreme Court in Pennsylvania,” said Michael W. Sances, associate professor and graduate chair of Temple University’s political science department.
In 2005, Russell Nigro, a Democrat, was the first and only Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice to be ousted by voters. People were angry over a late-night pay raise that state lawmakers had approved for themselves and the judiciary.
“Given the uncertainty involved in who would end up taking the seat, and also given retention elections almost never result in non-retention,” Sances said. “It seems like it will be very hard for Republicans to end up with these seats. That said, if they want to gain seats on the state Supreme Court, they don’t have many other options.”
However, Republican voter registration activist Scott Presler has been campaigning hard on the “no” side and believes many voters will heed his arguments. The three “egregious” cases he cites are the decision to uphold former Gov. Tom Wolf’s COVID lockdowns of “our churches, our businesses, and our schools.”
The second one is the 2018 gerrymander of the state’s congressional district map, which happened “right before the midterms” and led to a Democratic House majority that impeached President Donald Trump in his first term.
“And it caused mass confusion,” said Presler, who leads Early Vote Action. “Voters didn’t know where to go to vote if their district had changed.”
The last decision that drew Presler’s ire is one from 2020, in which the court permitted mail-in ballots that arrived three days after Election Day to be counted.
Wecht took part in all three cases. Dougherty approved the three-day late rule for mail-in ballots in 2020. And Donohue voted for the new map in the 2018 redistricting case. Donohue also turns 73 this year and is required to retire at 75.
“Why is Christine Donohue running for a 10-year term when she knows she is not able to serve 10 years?” asked Presler. “She has no business running for reelection.”
Presler also alleged that Dougherty has questionable ethics, having accepted $1.5 million in money and in-kind contributions for his first campaign from Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), which his brother John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty led before he was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison in 2024 for stealing nearly $600,000 from the union. In trial testimony, a witness said that the union spent thousands to improve Justice Dougherty’s house. A lawyer for the justice called that witness a liar, and Kevin Dougherty denied knowing that the union had paid for work on his home. The jurist did pay the worker, five years later, The Inquirer reported. Justice Dougherty was never charged with a crime, and all three justices have been recommended for retention by the state bar association.
“For all these reasons, I am asking every registered voter to vote no in the upcoming election,” Presler said. He also noted that any registered voter can vote in the general election in November and reminded voters to turn over their ballots for the judicial retention races. He’s been recruiting greeters to staff the polls, instructing voters to “flip over their ballot to fire five judges” and “turn over your ballot to term-limit your judges.”
Two other statewide judges, elected as Democrats, are also up for retention, and Presler urged voters to vote no for them as well.
And while it may be an uphill climb to get voters to care about judicial retention, Presler believes the outpouring of GOP sentiment that came after the assassination of Charlie Kirk may lead to a larger Republican turnout than usual for an off-year election.
If voters nix any or all of the justices, they will serve out their term, and then Gov. Josh Shapiro would appoint a temporary replacement. That person would need to be approved by the state Senate. Then there would be a judicial election in the next odd-year cycle, 2027, Sances said.