A Democratic state lawmaker and some former Ohio Supreme Court justices are backing a resolution to urge the high court to rule judges cannot endorse candidates for office.
Rep. Eric Synenberg (D-Beachwood) said the idea for House Concurrent Resolution 43 stems from a recent Ohio Supreme Court disciplinary conduct hearing.
“The Ohio Supreme Court interpreted and revised a long-standing judicial conduct rule that had previously limited judges from publicly endorsing political candidates,” Synenberg said. “The decision represented a significant departure from prior practice, shifting away from a decades-old framework, designed to improve judicial impartiality and maintain public confidence in the judiciary’s independence from partisan politics.”
Synenberg said he knows he and other lawmakers cannot legislatively overturn the high court’s action because of the separation of powers, so he said HCR 43 is the best idea lawmakers could come up with. Reps. Sean Brennan (D-Parma) and Beryl Brown-Piccolantonio (D-Gahanna) are also supportive of the resolution.
Some former Ohio Supreme Court justices are also speaking out for it. Democratic former justice Michael Donnelly served on the state’s high court from 2019 to 2024, when he lost re-election. When Donnelly first ran in 2018, he ran with no party label in the fall election. But in 2021, a new law required candidates for the Ohio Supreme Court and appeals courts, who were already running in partisan primaries, to have their party affiliation listed on the general election ballot. So when Donnelly ran in 2024, the Democratic designation hurt him as presidential candidate Donald Trump won Ohio by nearly 12 points.
Donnelly said the partisan labelling of candidates and allowing judges to endorse candidates injects partisanship into a process that should be non-partisan. Donnelly said political leanings should never factor into judicial decisions.
“My allegiance was to the law. And that’s what the citizens of Ohio expect from their judiciary. When they go in, they want a judge who calls the balls and strikes, to quote our current chief justice, according to the rules, according to the law," Donnelly said.
Former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Brown said he agrees justices should be non-partisan. He said he knows judges he worked with rule on the law rather than politics. But he said that because judges have been able to endorse other political candidates, the public may not believe judges are impartial.
“I believe that they [judges] will follow the law and do the right thing but the public doesn’t get it,” Brown said. “It just wreaks havoc with the entire system and with the trust that people have in the judicial system.”
Synenberg said he knows this resolution might be a hard sell with majority Republicans. But he said all lawmakers should support it, as “our courts should be less political, not more.” He said he wants to eventually introduce a bill to take party labels off the names of judicial candidates on the ballot, but that’s unlikely in the last six months before the legislative session ends in December.
