For the first time, a majority of the justices elected to the Texas Supreme Court will be women. That’s after four Democratic challengers unseated the Republican incumbents up for reelection in Tuesday’s midterm election.
Seven of the nine justices on the court will be women. The four Democrats join three Republican women on the bench. The court’s clerk, Blake Hawthorne, confirmed to KERA it will be the first majority female court outside of a specially appointed “All-Woman Supreme Court” that was created in 1925.
“They were not permanent members of the court,” Hawthorne said. “They just heard the one case.”
Maggie Ellis will also become the court’s first female chief justice after defeating her Republican opponent Jimmy Blacklock.
The new justices will serve six year terms.
A woman was first appointed to the Texas Supreme Court in 1982. Voters first elected a woman to the court in 1992.
Democrats also picked up three seats on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which is the highest court for criminal cases in Texas. Two of the Democrats are women, who will join two Republican female justice already on the court. A court official told KERA there’s been that number of female justice before.
The last time a Democratic judge was elected to either court was 32 years ago. On both courts Republicans will still maintain a majority – 5-4 on the Supreme Court and 6-3 Court of Criminal appeals.
Chad Ruback, a Dallas appellate attorney, told KERA it’s not clear how much of a difference the Supreme Court’s new demographics will make.
“I think it is possible that there could be a difference perceived, but I don’t think it’s fair to just assume all women are going to do this and all men are going to do this,” Ruback said.
What may have a bigger impact, he said, is the fact that Democrats will now be on the court.
“The current members of the Supreme Court are more independent in their legal analysis than I think some people give them credit for,” Ruback. “However, a 5-4 split is going to impact the court dramatically. I expect that having both political parties represented on the court for a minimum of the next six years will result in more dissenting opinions. I also expect to see majority opinions addressing competing arguments even more thoroughly than we’ve seen in the past few years.”
Historically, it’s not uncommon for justices from different parties to find common ground on some issues.
Ruback said having a politically mixed court may only impact a handful of cases each year.
“Often the law is clear-cut,” he said. “Often, there’s not a Democrat law or a Republican law.”
Ruback said justices “really do work hard to be impartial, to be fair, to be neutral, to be nonpartisan.”
Democratic candidates up and down Texas ballots saw historical wins Tuesday as part of a national blue wave.
The new judges will take office Jan. 1.
Dylan Duke is KERA’s Dallas Accountability Reporter. Got a tip? Email Dylan at dduke@kera.org.
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