The fight over the right to an abortion has expanded into yet another corner of American political life: the races to fill seats on state supreme courts.
Abortion is a central issue for progressive court candidates in Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky.
An effort is underway in Arizona to oust two justices who voted last spring to uphold a 160-year-old ban on most abortions.
In Texas, rulings by the state’s highest state court to sharply limit access to abortion have set off a campaign against three justices who are seeking re-election.
And in Montana, where new justices could undo a ruling that made abortion access a constitutional right, outside money from both the left and right has turned contests for two court seats into multimillion-dollar elections.
For decades, the issue of abortion powered conservative efforts to remake the federal judiciary. This time, progressive candidates and their backers are betting that it can be the driving force in state court races — but this time, to their benefit.
In 22 states, voters elect their supreme court justices. All but eight of them elect justices in contests that are officially nonpartisan, though the judges’ political leanings are often quite apparent.
Spending on those races by partisan groups, including the national Republican and Democratic parties, is soaring.
State supreme court elections racked up a record $101 million in spending in the 2021-22 election cycle, including $45.7 million by outside interest groups, the Brennan Center for Justice has reported.
Those numbers now seem quaint. Last year, a race for one Wisconsin Supreme Court seat consumed $51 million, a national record. Republican gerrymandering of the State Legislature and abortion were prominent issues in that election, which flipped the court from a conservative majority to a liberal one.
Abortion is “not the only issue these courts are incredibly important for,” said Deirdre Schifeling, the chief political and advocacy officer at the American Civil Liberties Union. But Ms. Schifeling said abortion was “top of mind” for voters this year, and so the A.C.L.U. is spending $1.3 million in Montana to defeat two conservatives running for state Supreme Court seats.
Fair Courts America, a national PAC tied to Richard Uihlein, a right-wing billionaire and founder of the Uline shipping supplies company, has given $400,000 so far to a local group backing the two Republican candidates in the Montana court contest.
The political advocacy arm of Planned Parenthood is spending $2.2 million in Montana on television and other advertising.
Planned Parenthood’s ads in Montana and three other states are the organization’s first in state supreme court contests. In past years, the group “didn’t have an immediate need to rely on state courts. We had Roe to fall back on,” said Katie Rodihan, the director of state advocacy communications for Planned Parenthood Votes.
No more. In Montana and elsewhere, “the state supreme court is really the front line for abortion access,” she said.
In one sense, the emphasis on abortion reflects the relentless pull of partisan politics on state courts, especially since a conservative U.S. Supreme Court began offloading authority to the states over issues like redistricting, abortion and gun rights.
But politics — even abortion politics — doesn’t always hold sway. In Alabama, three justices who ignited a national debate by ruling that frozen embryos are children are seeking re-election unopposed.
And in nonpartisan court elections in 2022, voters in Kentucky, Montana and Arkansas rejected candidates with explicitly political messages and backed by outside money.
At least in nonpartisan races, “voters are still able to express this idea that courts are not supposed to be partisan in the same way that other elected officers are,” said Douglas Keith, the senior counsel in the judiciary program at the Brennan Center for Justice.
Republicans are spending money in response to the growing spending by Democrats. The national Republican Party’s Judicial Fairness Initiative has said it will spend money in the same six states targeted by Democrats and progressives: Arizona, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.
Michigan and Ohio, the only two states where elections pose any likelihood of flipping a court’s ideological majority, lead the pack.
Democrats hold a 5-4 majority on the Michigan court, where two seats are being contested, including one seat held by the chief justice, a Democrat.
Both Planned Parenthood and the A.C.L.U. are spending huge sums there on issue-oriented campaigns that are certain to favor the two Democrats who are running. An independent PAC calls them “the only Supreme Court candidates who will protect access to abortion.”
Fair Courts America, meanwhile, has given $500,000 to a PAC run by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.
In Ohio, Democrats would have to win all three seats that are being contested to reverse the 4-3 Republican majority on the court, which took a turn to the right in elections in 2022. A Republican sweep, on the other hand, would give the party a 6-1 majority.
The outcomes of those contests will matter. Ohioans approved a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights in 2023. Voters also are widely expected to approve another amendment in November that will require nonpartisan redistricting in a state Republicans have heavily gerrymandered.
Disputes over the details and the implementation of both amendments are likely to come before the state’s next court, with huge political implications. Ads supporting Democratic candidates stress abortion; Republican ads try to link the Democrats to national issues like immigration and crime.
But abortion and redistricting aren’t the only issues tugging courts into the political arena. Voting rights, gun rights and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, all issues that resonate nationally, are also coming before state courts.
William K. Weisenberg, a prominent Ohio lawyer, is the co-chairman of an effort by the American Bar Association to restore confidence in American democracy and the judiciary.
“The perception now is that for the candidates for the highest courts, it’s not just their judicial philosophy, but their political affiliation that predicts how they will decide cases,” he said.
In the voting booth, Mr. Weisenberg said, “most people don’t pay attention. They just look at whether it’s an R or D.”
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