HOSCHTON, Ga. (AP) — The May election for Georgia’s Supreme Court is unfolding as races for the state’s highest court have done for decades: Incumbent justices are running uncontested.
But there is one exception, and it is motivated by the issue that has roiled politics across the country in the last two years: abortion.
Justice André Pinson is the only one of the four incumbents seeking election to face a challenge, and it is a formidable one. Former U.S. Rep. John Barrow, a Democrat, hopes to seize on voter backlash over abortion restrictions to unseat Pinson, in what could be a model for future judicial contests in Georgia, in a state that has become a partisan battleground.
The May 21 general election for a six-year term is nonpartisan and a Barrow victory would not change the court’s conservative leanings. Eight of the nine justices, including Pinson, were appointed by Republican governors. The other won his seat unopposed after being appointed to a state appeals court by a Democratic governor.
Barrow’s offer is seen as a remote possibility. Pinson, appointed two years ago by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, appears to be raising more campaign money as the state’s legal system closes ranks around him.
But Barrow hopes a voter backlash against Georgia’s near-total abortion ban will be the path to a turnaround.
In conversations primarily with Democratic groups, Barrow says that when Pinson was Georgia’s attorney general, he was the lawyer most responsible for the state’s support of the Mississippi case that led to the U.S. Supreme Court. overturning the constitutional right to abortion in 2022.
This decision opened the way for a 2019 Georgia law to take effect banning most abortions after fetal heart activity is detected, usually around the sixth week of pregnancy. This is before many women know they are pregnant.
At an April 15 Democratic meeting at a retirement community northeast of Atlanta, Barrow attacked former Pinson member on Federalist Society and his term as secretary of the Supreme Court of Justice Clarence Thomasdrawing boos from the 50 participants.
Barrow said he believes Georgians have a state constitutional right to abortion and that voters would increase their chances of restoring broader access to abortion by doing something they have never done before: defeating an incumbent state judge.
“I happen to believe that the Georgia Constitution provides for the right to privacy, and that encompasses everything we associate with what the law was under Roe v. Wade. And then it’s probably broader,” Barrow said. “That would mean that the current statute, the current prohibition that we live with now, violates that provision of the Constitution.”
Opponents of the six-week ban are challenging it in state court, arguing that Georgia’s exceptionally well-developed law protecting privacy should override it. That case is almost certainly heading back to the Georgia Supreme Court
Pinson said it would be inappropriate to discuss his views on abortion or other topics that could come before the court.
“If judges start talking about issues in cases that come to court, or that could come to court, and opine: ‘Personally, I think this; Personally, I think it starts to undermine people’s trust in our judiciary,” Pinson said in an interview.
State Supreme Court races have become more expensive in recent years as courts weigh in on issues such as political manipulation. The US Supreme Court decision that overturned the right to abortion placed these breeds under even greater scrutiny in the last two years, when the divisive issue returned to the states.
Public polls show that a majority of people in the U.S. support abortion rights, and voters have affirmed abortion rights in seven states in the past two years since Roe v. Wade. Wade was overruled, including in Republican-leaning states like Kentucky, Montana and Ohio.
Douglas Keith, who monitors state supreme courts for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said the money was invested in races by groups on the left and right, creating contests like that last year in Wisconsin. There, a liberal, Democrat-backed judge flipped the court after defeating a former judge backed by Republicans and anti-abortion groups in the most expensive state Supreme Court race ever.
“We’re seeing money like we’ve never seen before in these races. Candidates and groups are adopting messages they have never used in judicial elections before, and there is generally more attention on these races,” Keith said.
Pinson, 37, graduated first from the University of Georgia law school and served four years as attorney general, helping Georgia win a long-standing dispute over water rights. Kemp appointed Pinson to the state Court of Appeals in 2021 and elevated him to Georgia’s high court a year later. Many lawyers, including some Democrats, supported him in the election.
Significant election challenges to Georgia judges are rare. Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University, said this reflects a “small club dynamic” that prevails in Georgia’s legal system.
“I just think we’re dealing with kind of an old school mentality where people don’t really want to get involved in the kind of partisan warfare over judicial seats like we’ve seen in some other states,” Kreis said.
Barrow, 69, served five terms in Congress and for a time was the only white Democratic representative from the Deep South. He finally lost in 2014 after Republicans dominated his district for a second time. In 2018, he narrowly lost a statewide race for Georgia secretary of state for Republican Brad Raffensperger.
Although judges are elected, the pattern has been for a judge to resign and let the governor name a successor. A newly appointed judge then spends two years on the bench before facing voters.
Barrow was denied the chance to run in 2020 after a judge announced that he would resign after the election date, before his term ended. A challenge arguing that the election should be held anyway was rejected. Barrow calls the appointment system “dysfunctional” and promises that, if elected, he will let voters choose his replacement.
“If the voters give me the job, I will give it back to the voters,” he said.
While his victory won’t change the court’s overall political makeup, Barrow said it would send a message to the state’s justices about abortion rights. He referenced the decision earlier this year by the Alabama Supreme Court that frozen embryos declared to be created through in vitro fertilization could legally be considered children and a Arizona Supreme Court ruling earlier this month, reviving the 1864 abortion ban before Arizona became a state.
“We’re getting information now across the country about the importance of the state Supreme Court justice position,” Barrow said.
