judicial elections

January 16, 2020 - Since the U.S Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United 10 years ago, corporate campaign cash has poured into supreme court races across the South. With seats up for grabs this year in Arkansas, North Carolina, and West Virginia, that trend is likely to continue.

November 21, 2019 - The plaintiffs in a racial gerrymandering lawsuit want a North Carolina court to block judicial elections in districts that were drawn last year by the state legislature. In the racially diverse city of Charlotte, three of the eight districts are more than 70 percent white.

November 6, 2019 - In Texas, which has long debated changes to its system of partisan judicial elections, Republican leaders began pushing an appointment system just a few months after last year's Democratic sweep in Houston's judicial elections. One proposed bill would put an end to elected judges in urban counties.

September 25, 2019 - Elections for high courts in five Southern states will take place over the next year, including special elections in Georgia, Kentucky, and Louisiana. Some of these courts are already facing unprecedented political pressure, and more money in high court races is coming from groups that don't disclose their donors.

August 27, 2019 - The latest gerrymandering lawsuit in North Carolina claims that when legislators changed judicial elections districts in Charlotte last year, they packed black voters into a few districts and violated a constitutional mandate for a "unified" state court system.

July 31, 2019 - A recent study found that judges in North Carolina and two other states hand down longer sentences during their re-election campaigns. It also confirmed that judges in some states treat black defendants more harshly, with the disparity most pronounced in Alabama. 

July 15, 2019 - Across the South, voting rights advocates argue that judicial elections violate the Voting Rights Act by depriving communities of color of representation on state courts. Federal courts are hearing lawsuits in Arkansas and Alabama, where the state supreme courts are all white.

May 23, 2019 - Political watchdogs have unearthed new details about the funding of the shadowy secret-money group that promoted Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whose confirmation is the reason so many Republican-controlled state legislatures are rushing to pass abortion bans. The group is also spending big to move state courts to the right.

March 28, 2019 - After the state legislature failed to revamp a judicial voting district found to be racially discriminatory, a federal court has picked a technical advisor from California to do the job instead. Will the non-white voters of Terrebonne Parish finally get a fair shot at electing a judge of their choice next year?