Washington, D.C. — Today, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC) and Planned Parenthood Votes announce a new joint effort to protect democracy and reproductive rights with a collective investment of at least $5 million on state supreme court races across the country. As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and Rucho v. Common Cause decisions, state supreme courts have become central to the struggle to protect democracy as well as sexual and reproductive health rights. 

“The notion that the outcome of a case should be determined by the makeup of a court is antithetical to accepted American jurisprudence. Yet that is exactly what is happening in too many state supreme courts across the country. It is a result of a deleterious, years-long effort by partisan interests to turn state judiciaries into yet another political instrument to force unpopular, minority-supported policies onto the people. This anti-democracy campaign must be stopped,” said Eric H. Holder, Jr., the 82nd attorney general of the United States and chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC). “NDRC is teaming up with Planned Parenthood Votes to meet this urgent moment by prioritizing these races together.  Our aim is to protect the independence of state supreme courts, to ensure that they are composed of justices who are dedicated to interpreting the law in a neutral way, who will adhere to precedent, and who will protect the fundamental rights of all citizens.” 

“We are in the fight of our lives to protect and restore our fundamental freedoms — and our courts are the front lines,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “Opponents of abortion access, LGBTQ+ equality, and democracy itself are tilting the scales of justice by stacking courts that will carry out their destructive agendas. If this continues, we will surely see more devastating decisions upholding abortion bans, limiting care like IVF, and denying transgender people their dignity. We cannot afford to lose the fight for fair, unbiased courts. Planned Parenthood advocacy and political organizations across the country are committed to making fair courts a reality, because our futures hang in the balance.”

Over the past several years, powerful special interests and out-of-touch politicians have waged a concerted effort to thwart the independence of state supreme courts by installing partisan justices who put ideology ahead of legal principle and precedent. Our opponents have said their goal is to “control the supreme courts” so they can “control the redistricting process.”

Since this launch, new conservative state supreme court majorities in North Carolina and Ohio overturned voting rights decisions made just months prior by the prior court majority, ignoring long-established legal principles and precedent, to arrive at deeply partisan decisions. 

And state courts continue to assault reproductive freedom. State supreme courts have been responsible for upholding abortion bans in states like Florida and Arizona. And they have also created dangerous precedents that could limit other reproductive care — such as the Alabama Supreme Court decision that gave stored embryos legal personhood and interrupted care for IVF patients. Other courts, most recently in New York, have interfered with direct democracy efforts to protect abortion access. 

NDRC and Planned Parenthood Votes plan to combat those efforts and protect the courts’ independence. Specifically, NDRC and Planned Parenthood Votes will each focus on the states where state supreme court candidates are on the ballot in 2024 — including Arizona, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas. 

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