State Supreme Court Races to Watch in 2026

Thirty-two states will hold elections for 65 seats on their highest courts this year. State supreme court elections have attracted unprecedented attention — and spending — in recent years, in large part due to U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have weakened or eliminated federal courts’ role in protecting many rights, abortion rights in particular. This rights gap has put a spotlight on the power state supreme courts have to interpret and apply state constitutional protections and other state laws.

This year’s elections will take place during a period of new intensity in state judicial politics. They follow a 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, for example, that more resembled a competitive U.S. Senate race than a judicial election, with national headlines, a presidential endorsement, and interest groups and donors spending more than $100 million on the race. Television ads discussed abortion rights, trans healthcare, President Trump, and more. The election shattered spending and turnout records.

In 2026, state courts will play a key role in deciding legal questions in the leadup to the midterm elections — including disputes about ballot measures, rules for voting by mail, and possibly even challenges to election results after the elections have taken place. With state high courts continuing to have the final word in many of the highest profile legal challenges of the day, increased attention on these courts is unlikely to dissipate any time soon.

The stakes are high in this year’s supreme court elections, as the outcomes will affect court decisions determining rights and protections under state law, and will determine if the several courts’ ideological majorities will be at stake in 2028.

These are the state supreme court elections we are watching closely this year:

Wisconsin

The first major judicial election this year will take place on April 7 in Wisconsin, the embodiment of intensified judicial politics. Liberal candidates have won the last three elections for seats on the court and have held a 4–3 majority since 2023. Unlike Wisconsin’s last two supreme court elections in 2023 and 2025, however, the court’s majority is not at stake this year —although its outcome will determine when the court’s majority is next on the line.

Two Wisconsin Court of Appeals judges, Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor, are running in the nonpartisan election to replace retiring Justice Rebecca Bradley, a member of the court’s conservative bloc. A win by Lazar, who conservative groups have supported in past elections, would likely maintain the court’s current ideological balance and potentially put the majority up for grabs in 2028. A win by Taylor, who previously served as a Democrat in the legislature and has been endorsed by the Wisconsin Democratic Party, would grow the liberal majority and likely solidify it until 2030.

Since liberal justices gained a majority in 2023, the court has issued major decisions, ruling that a two-centuries old abortion ban had been impliedly repealed and striking down state legislative maps under the state constitution. Among the issues likely to be considered by the court in the future are two state constitutional challenges to the state’s congressional map, and a challenge to a college financial aid program that plaintiffs argue is discriminatory.

North Carolina

Another race to watch is in North Carolina, where Justice Anita Earls, a Democrat, is being challenged by Sarah Stevens, a Republican currently serving in the North Carolina House of Representatives.

Since 2018, candidates for the North Carolina Supreme Court have run in partisan elections, and Republicans have held a 5–2 majority since 2023. Immediately after claiming that majority, the court used rarely deployed procedures to rehear and reverse decisions on voter ID and redistricting issued by the previous Democratic majority. Earls dissented in those cases. The court appears poised to do the same in long-running litigation in which the court had previously ordered the legislature to address disparities in public education funding. And after the only other Democrat on the court, Justice Alison Riggs, narrowly won her November 2024 election, the court ruled partially in favor of her opponent’s post-election lawsuit asking the state to throw out thousands of votes. A federal court superseded that ruling and ordered the state to certify Riggs’s victory.

If Earls holds her seat, the court’s 5–2 Republican supermajority will remain, but Democrats will have an opportunity to flip the court’s majority in 2028, when three seats currently held by Republican justices are up for election. For this reason, the state’s political leaders and major donors are likely to engage heavily in the Earls–Stevens race. In the 2024 election, when the majority was similarly not at stake, the state saw its first ever judicial race with $10 million in campaign spending.

Washington

Five seats on the nine-member Washington State Supreme Court are up for election this year, including at least two open seats. Chief Justice Debra Stephens will run for reelection and Justice Colleen Melody will run in her first election since Gov. Bob Ferguson appointed her last year to fill a vacancy on the court. Justice Raquel Montoya-Lewis and Justice Charles Johnson, meanwhile, are retiring at the end of the year, leaving their seats to be filled in elections with no incumbents on the ballot. The fifth seat is currently held by Justice Barbara Madsen, who recently announced her plans to retire this April. Ferguson is likely to appoint a temporary replacement, who would be eligible to compete in November in an election to fill the seat for the remainder of Madsen’s term.

The Washington State Supreme Court has been a national judicial leader advancing protections for rights under state law that other state courts have often drawn upon in their own decisions. This includes landmark state constitutional rulings prohibiting mandatory life sentences for anyone under 21, striking down the death penalty, and reassessing how courts consider a person’s race and ethnicity when determining the constitutionality of police stops. While this year’s appointment and elections are unlikely to result in a major change in the court’s ideological composition, they mean that a majority of the court will be composed of new members — potentially impacting the issues the court chooses to prioritize and the extent to which it breaks new ground in developing state jurisprudence.

Several lower court judges have already expressed their intention to run for a seat on the court. Montoya-Lewis endorsed Washington State Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Diaz to replace her, and three candidates have filed to run for Johnson’s seat: Superior Court Judge Sean O’Donnell, Washington State Court of Appeals Judge Ian Birk, and attorney David Shelvey. Superior Court Judge Sharonda Amamilo has also filed to run, though her filings do not yet indicate for which seat.

Montana

Montana, whose judicial elections are nonpartisan, will hold an election for one seat this November. More than possibly any other state high court, the Montana Supreme Court has attracted the ire of the state’s more conservative legislature and governor. In 2024, the court issued a series of decisions striking down abortion limits and restrictive voting laws, and applying the state constitution’s right to a clean and healthful environment to invalidate a state law prohibiting the consideration of greenhouse gas emissions in environmental policy making. These rulings prompted complaints by the state’s Republican senate majority leader that “the Montana Supreme Court is one of the most liberal courts in the nation.” The legislature responded with a raft of bills aimed at making it harder for the court to rule against them, or to change who sits on the court altogether, and is pursuing an ethics investigation into a sitting justice. Montanans also saw their most expensive judicial elections ever in 2024.

This year, Justice Beth Baker announced she will not run for a third term on the court. District Court Judge Dan Wilson, who lost his 2024 bid for a seat, and District Court Judge Amy Eddy have announced their intentions to run for the seat. In 2024, Wilson described himself as a “judicial conservative.” Eddy, who was temporarily appointed to a short-term vacancy on the state supreme court, joined its 2025 decision striking down several recently-passed abortion restrictions and regulations.

The court’s highest profile decisions have often been unanimous or nearly unanimous, and the court’s membership does not fit into easy ideological categories. However, in a recent dissent, two of the court’s more conservative justices accused four of their colleagues of appearing to “weaponize the law” against the state’s Republican officials. (Baker also dissented but did not join this opinion.). With a case related to the court’s recent climate decision pending in a lower court, and a recent trial court ruling striking down an anti-trans law, Wilson or Eddy will join a court poised to decide more politically charged cases.

Michigan

This year, Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Megan Cavanagh is running for reelection and Justice Noah Hood is running in his first election after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer appointed him to a vacancy on the court last year. Candidates for the Michigan Supreme Court run in nonpartisan elections but are endorsed by political parties at the parties’ conventions. Currently six of the seven justices on the Michigan Supreme Court were endorsed by the Michigan Democratic Party or appointed by a Democratic governor, including Cavanagh and Hood. No candidates have announced plans to challenge Cavanagh and Hood, though there are months to go before the deadline for candidates to enter the race.

While decisions about abortion and elections may attract the most attention, the Michigan Supreme Court has stood out for its recent rulings related to the constitutional rights of people convicted of crimes. Just last year, the court ruled that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for anyone under 21 years old violate the state constitution’s prohibition on “cruel or unusual punishment.” It will also soon decide on the constitutionality of mandatory life-without-parole sentences for people convicted of murder, despite not having themselves killed anyone, because of their participation in some other crime connected to the person’s death. (These convictions are often referred to as “felony murder.”) The court has also expanded the available remedies for constitutional violations: In 2022, the court issued a landmark decision that the public has a right to sue the government for money damages when their state constitutional rights are violated.

Retention Elections in States with Supreme Court Decisions About Abortion

Several states that hold retention elections, where sitting justices stand for an uncontested up-or-down vote to retain their seats for an additional term, could also see organized anti-retention campaigns this year. Justices frequently win retention elections with a large majority of the vote, but these races can become more competitive following high-profile decisions or when well-resourced interest groups target a sitting justice. In 2024, an Oklahoma Supreme Court justice lost a retention election for the first time in state history after allies of the governor and charter school advocates organized against her retention.

Justices in 14 states are up for retention this year, including in states where courts have issued the kind of high-profile decisions that could attract anti-retention campaigns. In Wyoming, for example, Justice Robert Jarosh, who was in the majority in the court’s recent decision protecting abortion rights, will have to stand for retention to remain on the court. In Arizona, Justice John Lopez, the author of that high court’s opinion upholding Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban, is up for retention. Following the ruling, Arizona voters amended the state constitution to codify a right to abortion.

Ballot Measures Affecting How States Pick Judges

In addition to these elections, ballot measures in Kansas and Montana will ask voters to consider how judges are selected, with likely long-term effects on the makeup of two state supreme courts that have at times frustrated their legislatures.

In Kansas, where the legislature once went as far as threatening to defund the judicial branch in response to the court’s decision requiring the legislature to provide more funding for public education, the legislature has put before voters a measure to abandon the state’s current system for picking judges. Under the existing merit selection system, the governor appoints judges from a list provided by a judicial nominating commission comprised of nonlawyers appointed by the governor and lawyers elected by lawyers in the state. This year’s proposed constitutional amendment, which the public will vote on in August, would instead have the public elect state supreme court justices, with the potential to alter the court’s ideological balance as soon as 2028.

In Montana, which already elects its judges, organizers are currently gathering signatures to put before voters a citizen-initiated effort to insulate the court from explicitly partisan politics. The ballot initiative comes after the legislature advanced several bills that would have converted the state’s nonpartisan judicial elections to partisan elections. After those measures ultimately did not pass, this amendment would enshrine the nonpartisan nature of the state’s judicial elections in the constitution, making it impossible for the legislature to change course in the future without the public’s consent. Voters will likely decide on that measure in November.

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The above contests are only a portion of those that will shape state high courts this year. States like Ohio and Texas, each with multiple seats up for election, have seen significant activity and campaign spending in the past and may again this year. And states that have not previously experienced competitive judicial elections could for the first time.

At the same time, some courts are noteworthy for their lack of contested elections. In Nevada and Kentucky, for example, no candidates filed to challenge sitting justices this year despite those court’s high profile decisions about elections and abortion. Still, the landscape of competitive and highly politicized supreme court elections is likely to only grow in this supercharged era of judicial politics.

Douglas Keith is a founding editor of State Court Report and the deputy director of the Judiciary Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Suggested Citation: Douglas Keith, State Supreme Court Races to Watch in 2026, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ(Feb. 10, 2026), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/state-supreme-court-races-watch-2026