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Battle over abortion access stretches to state supreme court races
Washington — As abortion continues to be a focal point of Democrats’ campaigns for Congress and Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid for the White House, the issue has also taken on a prominent role in state supreme court races as judges are tasked with determining access.
Voters in at least 30 states will decide who will fill 69 state supreme court seats in judicial elections, with the ideological balances of two high courts — in Michigan and Ohio — at stake. In both of those states and several others, including North Carolina, Kentucky and Montana, state high courts have decided high-profile cases and could see their compositions shift in November.
In anticipation of the roles they’ll play, advocacy organizations are spending big on state supreme court elections this year. Planned Parenthood Votes and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee committed to investing at least $5 million on state supreme court races this cycle, and Planned Parenthood Votes is spending $2 million in Montana specifically.
The Montana Supreme Court has ruled that the state constitution recognizes the right to abortion, but a change in its makeup could lead to a reversal of that decision. Voters will cast ballots to fill the seats of two retiring justices, who were backed by Democrats.
The ACLU of Michigan is investing $2 million in the state’s supreme court races, where two seats are on the ballot, and the group is also focusing on Montana and Ohio’s judicial contests through its Voter Education Fund.
On the other side, the Republican State Leadership Committee and Fair Courts America, a PAC tied to GOP donor Richard Uihlein, are targeting judicial elections in many of the same states with the goal of electing conservative judges.
“The front lines of the battle”
The heightened focus — and spending — on these races arose after the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which cleared the way for states to enact their own laws restricting access to or protecting abortion. Twenty-three states have curtailed abortion access since Roe’s reversal and 14 of those have put in place near-total bans with limited exceptions.
As a result, state judges have been tasked with interpreting those laws and just how far their exceptions go. Voters in seven states have also weighed in on abortion rights directly through ballot measures, and access is on the ballot in 10 more states in November.
While the pro-abortion rights position has succeeded in all seven states so far, state courts are hearing disputes over the language of the approved constitutional amendments, with more likely on the horizon after next month’s contests.
“When there are abortion measures on the ballot, voters go to vote and enshrine abortion into the state constitution and they may think, our job is done. That right is protected,” said Douglas Keith, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice. “But as we’ve seen, any constitutional amendment is still going to have boundaries that are being interpreted by courts. What court is going to be interpreting that newly passed amendment can be really significant in determining what that right consists of.”
JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images
Litigation following the adoption of a state constitutional amendment is already underway in Ohio, where voters in 2023 approved Issue 1, a constitutional amendment that established the right to abortion. In the first ruling on the merits of the measure, a county judge in August blocked laws requiring a 24-hour waiting period for abortions. The state is appealing the decision.
Republicans currently have a 4-3 majority on the Ohio Supreme Court, and three sitting justices are on the ballot. If Democratic candidates win all three seats, control of the court would flip. But if Republicans are victorious in all three races, the party would expand its majority to 6-1.
“In a post-Roe v. Wade environment, there’s a high-profile issue that is being decided in various kinds of ways at the state level, and state supreme courts can be an important part of that,” said Kyle Kondik, an election analyst at the University of Virginia.
State supreme courts have the final word on questions of state law. Before the nation’s highest court unwound the constitutional right to abortion, outside groups largely focused on state judicial races because of the role those courts play in redistricting disputes. The nation’s high court in 2019 closed the doors of federal courts to cases involving partisan gerrymandering, leaving the states as the final adjudicators of legal battles over district lines drawn to entrench the party in power.
But the attention paid to these races rose significantly in the summer of 2022 as the issue was returned to states.
“We always had Roe to fall back on at the federal level, so we didn’t have state supreme courts playing as big of a role in people’s access to abortion care,” Katie Rodihan, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Votes, told CBS News. “Now they’re the front lines of the battle.”
The first two state supreme court elections held after Roe was overturned were the most expensive, Keith said. In Wisconsin, the April 2023 race for a single supreme court seat saw $51 million in total spending. In Pennsylvania, at least $22 million was spent in its November 2023 race, according to a Brennan Center analysis.
During the 2021-2022 election cycle, stakeholders spent more than $100 million on state supreme court elections, the Brennan Center found, $45.7 million of which came from outside interest groups.
“It is a new era in terms of the attention on these races,” Keith said.
Twenty-two states hold elections for members of their supreme courts, and 14 of those races are nonpartisan. In the remaining eight, candidates are listed with political affiliation.
In Ohio, the inclusion of party labels started in 2022 after state GOP lawmakers approved legislation to list certain judicial candidates’ political affiliations.
The heightened attention on these races can lead to judicial elections — and the decisions coming out of the state supreme courts — becoming more partisan, which threatens to blur the distinctions between these contests and others for the state legislature or federal office.
“It’s harder for the public to be confident their judges aren’t partisan in the way every other elected official in the state is,” Keith said. “That trust that judges are different deteriorates as these elections stop looking different and look like every other statewide election.”
But Keith said for nonpartisan races, the last election cycle showed that “when voters are not bound by their party loyalty, when party labels aren’t on the ballot, they’re expressing this idea that they don’t want judges to be like any other elected official.”
Still, it’s unlikely the emphasis on state supreme court elections will dim: Rodihan, of Planned Parenthood votes, said this won’t be the last election cycle where the group is focused on these races.
“It’s going to be critical for us to make these investments going forward,” she said. “There’s no doubt in our minds that state supreme courts will be battleground races.”
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World falling “miles short’ of emissions goals to curb climate change, U.N. says, sounding the alarm
Paris — Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere reached record highs in 2023, the United Nations warned on Monday, saying countries are falling “miles short” of what’s needed to curb devastating global warming.
Levels of the three main greenhouse gases — heat-trapping carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — all increased yet again last year, said the World Meteorological Organization, the U.N.’s weather and climate agency.
Carbon dioxide was accumulating in the atmosphere faster than ever, up more than 10 percent in two decades, it added.
And a separate U.N. report found that barely a dent is being made in the 43 percent emissions cut needed by 2030 to avert the worst of global warming.
Action as it stands would only lead to a 2.6 percent reduction this decade from 2019 levels.
“The report’s findings are stark but not surprising — current national climate plans fall miles short of what’s needed to stop global heating from crippling every economy and wrecking billions of lives and livelihoods across every country,” said U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell.
The two reports come just weeks before the United Nations COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan and as nations prepare to submit updated national climate plans in early 2025.
“Bolder” plans to slash the pollution that drives warming will now have to be drawn up, Stiell said, calling for the end of “the era of inadequacy.”
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries said they would cap global warming at “well below” two degrees Celsius above average levels measured between 1850 and 1900 — and 1.5C if possible.
But so far, their actions have failed to meet that challenge.
Existing national commitments would see 51.5 billion tons of CO2 and its equivalent in other greenhouse gases emitted in 2030 — levels that would “guarantee a human and economic trainwreck for every country, without exception,” Stiell said.
As long as emissions continue, greenhouse gases will keep accumulating in the atmosphere, raising global temperatures, WMO said.
Last year, global temperatures on land and sea were the highest in records dating as far back as 1850, it added.
WMO chief Celeste Saulo said the world was “clearly off track” to meet the Paris Agreement goal, adding that record greenhouse gas concentrations “should set alarm bells ringing among decision-makers.”
“CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than at any time during human existence,” the report said, adding that the current atmospheric CO2 level was 51 percent above that of the pre-industrial era.
The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was three to five million years ago, when the temperature was two to three degrees Centigrade warmer and the sea level was 65 feet higher than now, it said.
Given how long CO2 lasts in the atmosphere, current temperature levels will continue for decades, even if emissions rapidly shrink to net zero.
In 2023, CO2 concentrations were at 420 parts per million (ppm), methane at 1,934 parts per billion, and nitrous oxide at 336 parts per billion.
CO2 accounts for about 64 percent of the warming effect on the climate.
Its annual increase of 2.3 ppm marked the 12th consecutive year with an increase greater than two ppm — a streak caused by “historically large fossil fuel CO2 emissions in the 2010s and 2020s,” the report said.
Just under half of CO2 emissions remain in the atmosphere, while the rest are absorbed by the ocean and land ecosystems.
Climate change itself could soon “cause ecosystems to become larger sources of greenhouse gases,” WMO deputy chief Ko Barret warned.
“Wildfires could release more carbon emissions into the atmosphere, whilst the warmer ocean might absorb less CO2. Consequently, more CO2 could stay in the atmosphere to accelerate global warming.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba vowed Monday to stay in office despite his gamble of snap elections backfiring, with his party’s ruling coalition falling short of a majority for the first time since 2009.
Ishiba called Sunday’s election days after taking office on October 1, but voters angry at a slush fund scandal punished his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has governed Japan almost non-stop since 1955.
Ishiba, 67, insisted on Monday he was staying put, saying he would not allow a “political vacuum” in the world’s fourth-biggest economy.
He said the biggest election factor was “people’s suspicion, mistrust and anger” after the party scandal, which helped sink his predecessor, Fumio Kishida.
“I will enact fundamental reform regarding the issue of money and politics,” Ishiba told reporters.
The yen hit a three-month low, sliding more than one percent against the dollar.
According to projections by national broadcaster NHK and other media, the LDP and its junior coalition partner Komeito missed Ishiba’s stated goal of winning 233 seats – a majority in the 456-member lower house.
The LDP won 191 seats, down from 259 at the last election in 2021, according to NHK’s tallies. Official results were yet to be published.
“As long as our own lives don’t improve, I think everyone has given up on the idea that we can expect anything from politicians,” restaurant worker Masakazu Ikeuchi, 44, told AFP on Monday in rainy Tokyo.
On Monday, the LDP’s election committee chief, former premier Junichiro Koizumi’s son Shinjiro Koizumi, resigned to “take responsibility” for the outcome.
The most likely next step is Ishiba seeking to head a minority government, with the divided opposition probably incapable of forming a coalition of their own, analysts said.
Ishiba, who has 30 days to form a government, said Monday he was not considering a broader coalition “at this point.”
A minority government would likely slow down the parliamentary process as Japan confronts a host of challenges from a falling population to a tense regional security environment.
It could also push figures within the LDP to try to unseat Ishiba.
“Lawmakers aligned with (former prime minister Shinzo) Abe were cold-shouldered under Ishiba, so they could potentially pounce on the opportunity to take their revenge,” Yu Uchiyama, a political science professor at the University of Tokyo, told AFP.
“But at the same time, with the number of LDP seats reduced so much, they might take the high road and support Ishiba for now, thinking it’s not the time for infighting,” he said.
A big winner was former premier Yoshihiko Noda’s opposition Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), which increased its projected seat tally to 148 from 96 at the last election.
Noda in the campaign pounced on media reports that the LDP was financially supporting district offices headed by figures caught up in the slush fund scandal.
“Voters chose which party would be the best fit to push for political reforms,” Noda said late Sunday, adding that the “LDP-Komeito administration cannot continue”.
Mirroring elections elsewhere, fringe parties did well, with Reiwa Shinsengumi, founded by a former actor, tripling its seats to nine after promising to abolish the sales tax and boost pensions.
The anti-immigration and traditionalist Conservative Party of Japan, established in 2023 by nationalist writer Naoki Hyakuta, won its first three seats.
The number of women lawmakers, meanwhile, reached a record high of 73, according to NHK, but they still make up less than 16 percent of the legislature.
“I think the outcome was a result of people across Japan wanting to change the current situation,” said voter Takako Sasaki, 44.
Ishiba said before the election that he was planning a new stimulus packaging to ease the pain of rising prices, another contributor to Kishida’s unpopularity.
Another big area of spending is the military, with Kishida having pledged to double defense spending and boost U.S. military ties as a counter to China.
Ishiba has backed the creation of a regional military alliance along the lines of NATO to counter China, although he has cautioned it would “not happen overnight”.
China’s foreign ministry said Monday it wanted a “constructive and stable China-Japan relationship that meets the requirements of the new era”.
