Can it really be a happy new year?
Yes, Pennsylvania suffered Democratic losses in the Congress, the U.S. Senate, and its row offices – i.e., Attorney General, Auditor General, and Treasurer. But the good news is that the makeup in the state legislature will be the same as it was in 2024, with the PA House having a one-seat Democratic advantage. And we still have a Democratic governor.
As far as the losses go, however, readers should be reminded of the message from the film Animal House: “Don’t get mad, get even.”
And 2025 will provide us with an ample number of opportunities to get even. The DA’s race in Philadelphia will test Larry Krasner’s popularity against a rising Republican movement there, while school board races will no doubt continue to be culture war battlegrounds in a number of districts throughout the state.
But nowhere will getting even be more crucial than in the judicial retention races in the state’s appellate courts. All of the state’s appellate retention races this year are for judges who originally ran as Democrats. Michael Wojcik and Alice Dubow are running for retention in Commonwealth and Superior Courts respectively. Commonwealth Court has a slight Republican majority of five to four, while the Superior Court has an eight to six Democrat-to-Republican advantage of active judges. Retention in both of these courts is important, but will not change their ideological direction.
But the PA Supreme Court is a different story, where Christine Donohue, David N. Wecht, and Kevin M. Dougherty are running to keep their seats. This court only has seven seats, so if these judges lose their retention bid, the court will be evenly split ideologically, until new justices are elected. Shapiro can nominate temporary justices in the interim, but two-thirds of the Republican dominated state Senate must approve the nomination. Good luck with that.
Republicans have had their eyes on these retention races for quite some time. In September, 2023, GOP political consultant Christopher Nicholas told WHYY that “There are people chomping at the bit to vote one or all three of those 2015 Democratic babies off the bench;” but it’s the recent remarks of Scott Presler, the head of the Elon Musk financed organization Early Vote Acton, that underscore our urgent need to keep these seats:
“We’re investing early. I know yard signs don’t vote, but I think, especially in an off-year election, you’re going to see Early Vote Action [put up] our ‘Vote No on Retention’ signs.”
“Victory begets victory,” said Presler. “I think the Democrats are truly very demoralized. They’re licking their wounds…We’re fired up. We want to keep winning. We’ll make Pennsylvania the next Ohio.”
“We’re going to keep registering voters…We’re going to keep showing up at farmers’ markets and gun shows. The days of Republicans not being 24/7, 365 are over.”
Apparently the two issues that the Republicans will use against these justices are (1) upholding then Governor’s Wolf’s pandemic lockdowns and (2) allowing mail-in ballots received three days after the 2020 election to be counted.
Never mind that the court made its decision at a time when social distancing became a matter of life and death; or that mail ballots were delayed by a diminished postal service due to the incompetence of a postmaster general who owed his job to Donald Trump.
It’s also difficult to believe how these two issues – which happened years ago – will have any bearing on the 2025 election, but the main lesson from 2024 is not to take anything for granted. Be prepared to be inundated with Jeffrey Yass financed leaflets and television advertising, making tenuous connections to election fraud, loss of liberty, crime, and economic decline over the next nine months.
While we may not be able to eliminate the Yass and Musk inspired negative, there is plenty that we can do to accentuate the positive by focusing on the rulings of the current Supreme Court. Consider the following
Consumer Issues: In two big cases - Gregg, et al. v. Ameriprise Fin., Inc., (2021), and Dwyer v. Ameriprise Fin., Inc. (2024) – the court ruled that under Pennsylvania’s Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law (UTPCPL), companies are liable for fraudulent and deceitful conduct, and victims of such practices are entitled to both stipulated damages and punitive damages under the law.
Health: The court has come under attack by the American Tort Reform Foundation (ATRF), an organization funded by such companies as Philip Morris, Dow Chemical, Exxon, General Electric, Aetna, Geico, and State Farm Insurance.
Recently, the ATRF released a report which listed Philadelphia’s Common Pleas Court and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court as the nation’s top “judicial hellholes” for defendants in civil suits.
The report faults the Supreme Court for allowing medical malpractice lawsuits to be filed anywhere in Pennsylvania, and for limiting the role of trial judges in determining what evidence can be presented in civil lawsuits.
Filings and payouts have increased in Philadelphia as a result of the Supreme Court’s decisions, but there is a fairly persuasive body of evidence that shows Philadelphia’s courts to be more efficient than most courts around the state.
The report also focuses on Monsanto, the producer of the herbicide Roundup. The active ingredient in Roundup is glyphosate, a suspected carcinogen. Monsanto has been the defendant in a number of Roundup lawsuits around the country. According to its website, they have lost in other states, and have also won cases in Philadelphia, but the ATRF claims that PA Supreme Court’s actions have forced trial judges to accept “junk science” studies as expert testimony. At issue is an International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) report linking glyphosate to cancer. The ATRF report asserts that more than 800 scientific studies and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Health Canada analyses contradict the IARC findings, but never mentions that almost all of those studies were commissioned by Monsanto, which is what the EPA analysis, and most likely the Health Canada analysis have based their analyses upon.
Womens Health: In 2024, the PA Supreme Court sent a case back to a lower court that would determine the constitutionality of a state law that withholds Medicaid funding for poor women to have an abortion. The lower court originally declined to hear the case.
Education: It was this court’s ruling in 2017 that ordered Commonwealth Court to bring state officials to trial for violating our state constitution with regard to the issue of school funding. That case was settled two years ago in favor of the state’s underfunded school districts.
Environment: The Supreme Court also overturned a prior Commonwealth Court decision, thereby allowing PennFuture, Clean Air Council, Sierra Club, and Environmental Defense Fund to participate in defense of Pennsylvania’s entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which has lowered greenhouse gas emissions in participating states.
Democracy: In February, 2018, the PA Supreme Court issued its opinion in League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania et al., v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania et al., that the 2011 map violates the Free and Equal Elections Clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution, which has no counterpart in the U.S. Constitution, resulting in Pennsylvania’s Congressional delegation going from a 13-5 Republican majority to a 9-9 split.
Firearms: Certainly not all of this court’s rulings have been great. One troubling decision upheld laws barring cities from passing gun safety regulations more stringent than the state’s. We need to change those laws, but until we do, let’s make sure that the pistol packing attendees at those gun shows know how these judges voted.
In the coming months, we’ll keep you posted for how to help these judges out. In the meantime, prepare yourselves for getting even.
Thanks,
Coleman
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