Today, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law released a new edition of The Politics of Judicial Elections, detailing spending in elections for state supreme court justices during the 2017-18 election cycle. Since 2000, the Brennan Center has partnered with the National Institute on Money in Politics to track state supreme court election spending, documenting more than a half-billion dollars in that time.

This study details how, without reform, high cost and politicized elections will continue to threaten the hope of equal justice in America’s courtrooms.

Major findings of the report include:

• Special interest groups maintained their elevated post-Citizens United role: PACs, social welfare 501c4s, and other groups accounted for 27 percent of all supreme court election spending (and much more in some states).
• Interest group spending continued to be almost entirely non-transparent: Eight of the 10 biggest spenders on supreme court elections did not disclose the true sources of their funds, leaving voters without information about who is trying to sway their vote and which judges might have conflicts of interest.
• The biggest source of dark money was likely the Judicial Crisis Network: The group, founded to boost conservative federal judicial nominees, likely put at least $3.8 million toward state court elections the same year it spent $10 million to seat Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Supreme Court.
• States made meager progress toward achieving more diverse supreme court benches: Voters elected several new justices of color in 2018, but none of the 24 states which entered the election with an all-white bench added a justice of color.

Key examples from the report illustrate the dangers of politicized high court races: In Michigan, a political party and its allies retaliated against a sitting justice for ruling against her party’s preferred outcome. In West Virginia, legislators successfully used a politically-tainted impeachment process to make room on the court for their political allies. In Ohio, the insurance industry gave more than $60,000 to a justice deciding an important insurance liability case weeks before Election Day. In Arkansas, interest groups ran ads so misleading that a court stepped in to block television stations from airing them.

The role of money in supreme court elections today threatens the appearance and reality of a fair system of justice. At a time of declining trust in America’s democratic institutions, these findings should add urgency to efforts to build courts worthy of the public’s confidence.