The Texas Supreme Court is the highest civil court in the state and voters will get to weigh in on three positions after some controversial rulings. NBC 5’s Phil Prazan reports.
Early Voting — What to Know
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Some voters may not know about a few of the most important races on the November ballot this election. Texans can decide whether to return justices to the highest Texas civil court.
Per the state constitution, most of our judges are elected. This past year, the Supreme Court of Texas upheld the state's near-total ban on abortion in some high-profile legal cases. The justices also upheld a decision by the State Fair of Texas to ban guns during their event. Many other controversial and impactful decisions come before the justices every month.
All nine judges on the court are Republicans.
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According to Justice Jimmy Blacklock, he views his role in a more limited way, which rarely deviates from what they believe lawmakers intended in writing the laws.
“It’s not the court’s job to sort out who’s right and wrong about a question like what the abortion laws should be in Texas, or whether there should be guns at the state fair. It’s the court’s job to determine who gets to make those decisions," said Blacklock in an earlier interview with Lone Star Politics.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, several high-profile abortion cases came before the Texas court. Dallasite Kate Cox's doctor recommended an abortion. The court overturned a district court's ruling, writing the decision was up to the doctor. Fearing fines and possibly prison under the strict abortion law, Cox's Texas doctor did not perform the procedure. She fled the state to have an abortion and is once again pregnant.
A similar case involving a group of women faced a similar fate in Zurawski vs. Texas.
Blacklock told NBC 5 the conservative justices upheld the state's strict abortion ban because they viewed the law as the way lawmakers intended it: with a very narrow medical exemption and with the decision being up to the woman's doctor.
“A lot of concern about the terrible situation that some of those women had found themselves in, but our job is not to rewrite the law that was passed by the legislature," said Justice Blacklock.
Blacklock is running against District Judge DaSean Jones. Blacklock has been more active on the campaign trail than the other two Republican justices. They never responded to an earlier interview request on Lone Star Politics.
Justice Jane Bland is up against Judge Bonnie Lee Goldstein and Libertarian candidate David Roberson. Justice John Devine is up against Judge Christine Vinh Weems.
“Nothing changes in our state until we have different judges on the Texas Supreme Court. This is essentially our ballot initiative," said Gina Ortiz Jones, who runs the Find Out PAC, a third-party group aiming to unseat the three Republican justices on the ballot.
Jones told NBC 5 earlier that this was one of the few times voters could weigh in on the future of the Texas judicial system regarding women's health issues.
“These folks are not doctors, right? They are partisan elected officials and so again we can hold them accountable based on their extreme views, upholding these extreme bans. We can do that in November," said Jones.
Texas voters will also decide three spots on the Court of Criminal Appeals. Texas is one of only two states that has a separate court for criminal cases. They are also on the ballot, and they may hold the keys to the future for the controversial and high-profile death penalty case of Robert Roberson.
