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Michigan voters will have the opportunity next month to call for a new state constitutional convention. If voters approve, delegates to the convention would have a big job ahead of them. They should start with the basic question of “How is the state constitution doing?” For some portions, the answer is clearly, “Not well.”

Michigan voters will have the opportunity next month to call for a new state constitutional convention. If voters approve, delegates to the convention would have a big job ahead of them. They should start with the basic question of “How is the state constitution doing?” For some portions, the answer is clearly, “Not well.”

Some of the clear and plain language of the Michigan Constitution is being ignored and has little impact on how government operates. Other provisions have failed to deliver on their intent. Delegates to a new convention would have an opportunity to fix these problems, and here are three sections of the constitution they could improve or remove.

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State debt authorization in Article IX, Section 15

As written, this provision lets the state borrow money, but only if two-thirds of both houses of the Legislature agree to the debt, and voters give their approval in a general election. This stringent requirement was designed to ensure that new debts have popular support from both the people and their representatives.

The intent of this provision is solid; the problem is that state government effectively ignores it. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued bonds to pay for road improvements in 2020, for instance, without a vote of the Legislature, let alone the approval of the people.

How is this possible, given the constitution’s clear requirements for taking on debt? Courts have ruled that the legislative and popular approval requirements only apply to bonds secured by the state’s full faith and credit. But that qualification is not in the constitutional language — the courts simply read it in. Delegates to a constitutional convention should ask whether they still want stringent debt authorization. If so, they ought to fix the language. If, instead, they think stringent requirements should only apply to general obligation debts, they should say so. And if they no longer feel like requiring supermajorities and popular support is a good idea, they should eliminate the section.

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Pension protection and funding requirements in Article IX, Section 24

When the delegates to our last constitutional convention added this provision, they said that government employees deserved the assurance that their pensions could not be rescinded based on political whim. Delegates also wanted to ensure that government employers were setting aside enough money to pay for pensions so that debts wouldn’t be kicked to future taxpayers.

“We believe this constitution must be a forward looking document; … that it must spell out for the future the manner in which these funds should be managed, so that our children will not, 50 years hence, suffer from the fact that we failed to put in enough money,” as one delegate put it.

It hasn’t worked. Government pension fund members are the state’s largest creditors. The school pension system — the largest pension system the state manages — has not had enough money saved to cover the costs of expected pensions in 49 of the past 50 years. Detroit’s largest creditors during the city’s 2013 bankruptcy proceedings were its pensioners. City officials had not saved enough to pay for their pensions, and employees’ pensions were cut as part of the bankruptcy process. This is the kind of problem Article IX, Section 24 was designed to avoid. Neither the security nor the funding mandate has worked, and delegates to a new convention ought to either figure out how to strengthen it or eliminate it.

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The effective date of legislation in Article IV, Section 27

If legislators want their bills to take effect when the governor signs them into law, they need to get two-thirds approval in both chambers. Yet, the practice in the House is to take a voice vote to determine whether a law should have immediate effect. That vote isn’t a roll call vote, meaning that whoever controls the House gavels on and declares sufficient support for immediate effect.

Legislative practices shouldn’t be contrary to plain constitutional language. If delegates don’t want require a supermajority vote for a law to have immediate effect, they can remove the section from the constitution. Otherwise, they ought to fix it.

The language regarding immediate effect, pensions and debt would not be the most debated provisions in a convention. Nor are they the most meaningful changes that a constitutional convention could make. But they’re exactly the kind of problems it could fix.

If voters were to approve a constitutional convention, there would be a lot of interest in some really important issues. But delegates also should review some less important provisions in the state constitution. Protections for existing pensions aren’t working. State debts get authorized even when officials don’t comply with stringent approval requirements. Immediate effect gets granted without supermajority approval. Delegates could and should either fix or abandon the provisions that address these situations.

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James M. Hohman is the director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Universities have been trying for years to cut back on the abuses among fraternities, with limited resources and limited success.

(THE CONVERSATION) — Universities have been trying for years to cut back on the abuses among fraternities, with limited resources and limited success.

A new lawsuit, filed by a former Cornell University student in September 2026, is now rattling higher education and drawing national attention.

The person, identified as Jane Doe, has alleged that seven Chi Phi fraternity members drugged and gang-raped her at an on-campus fraternity house when she was a sophomore in 2024.

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten declined to pursue criminal charges against the fraternity members in 2024. Following the filing of the case and emergence of new information, however, Van Houten said on Sept. 26 that he is planning “to discuss new evidence that exists” with the former Cornell student about her sexual assault claims.

The high-profile Cornell case is just one of the latest fraternity scandals. In August 2026, Pennsylvania announced charges against current and former Penn State fraternity members for their involvement in a criminal narcotics operation.

As an education scholar who researches the experiences of undergraduate college students and fraternities, I believe that universities and colleges have not devoted enough resources toward curtailing the hazing, sexual assault and other kinds of dangerous behavior that sometimes happens at fraternities or other student organizations.

But there is only so much they can do – in part because beneath it all is a hypermasculine culture of proving one’s worth.

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A need for more enforcement

In 1984, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act pressured states to set 21 as the minimum age to purchase and consume alcohol. All states made 21 the minimum age by 1988.

The change meant that most college students could no longer legally purchase alcohol, leading some of them to drink in more private settings, like fraternity houses.

Some universities felt concerned about the alcohol-related injuries and deaths occurring at fraternity houses. Schools also faced the possibility of lawsuits over underage drinking.

Harmful binge drinking remained a major problem on college campuses throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. A lot of the documented hazing incidents at fraternities during this time also involved alcohol.

Sexual assault on college campuses, including at fraternities, was another major issue during this time.

A lot of universities started to respond to students’ excessive alcohol use, in part through social norming. This term means correcting people’s mistaken beliefs about what their peers normally do, like regularly drinking excessively.
They also tried other harm-reduction strategies, like sharing direct information with students about the negative effects of consuming alcohol, as well as peer-led interventions to try to reduce unsafe drinking or encourage alcohol moderation.

But they didn’t necessarily respond to related problems surrounding hazing, such as substance misuse or addiction.

Some of the students’ parents, including those who had children who died as a result of hazing, were concerned. They developed a large, nationwide parent lobby to advocate for changes in hazing laws across states. These groups, not the universities, have been the most influential in advocating for changes in hazing laws.

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Some prevention efforts

It’s not that some universities haven’t tried to reduce hazing on their campuses. These efforts include practices such as hosting educational sessions, workshops, speakers and even placing moratoriums on social fraternity events that include alcohol.

Recent approaches have included teaching students how to recognize when their peers are emotionally distressed and need help.

Some universities have started research centers on hazing or hired full-time staff members whose jobs involve prevention and response work following a harmful incident such as hazing or sexual violence.

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Limited responses

Universities can kick fraternities off campus and kick out athletes who are charged with hazing or sexual assault.

But fraternities can also exist as private organizations, independent of a university. A university can withdraw recognition from a fraternity chapter and prohibit it from hosting events on campus, but that does not necessarily prevent the organization from hosting gatherings off campus.

Another issue is that universities and colleges like Cornell have a civil process for dealing with hazing and other crimes, including sexual assault, but not a criminal one. Schools cannot launch a criminal investigation, but they can levy educational sanctions, including banning students from campus or taking away students’ scholarships.

Expelling students for illegal misconduct such as sexual assault and hazing is a really common approach, but that is about as far as these schools can go in terms of discipline.

Schools may also cooperate with criminal investigations. Campus police, for example, can share their evidence and records with outside law enforcement. Or university staff may testify against students in court. But universities themselves cannot bring criminal charges.

After Jane Doe reported the incident to university police, Cornell says it took action.

In a September 2026 statement, Cornell said its range of sanctions included “expulsions and suspensions.” A few students were asked to write essays, but Cornell says this wasn’t “as a sole consequence of their involvement.”
The Chi Phi chapter involved in the incident was also closed in 2024, according to Cornell.

Following the lawsuit and recent national attention it received, Cornell agreed to bring in outside lawyers to determine whether it properly conducted the 2024 rape investigation.

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The role of masculinity

Proving your masculinity can become a central part of proving your worth and fit at a fraternity.

This hypermasculine culture – combined with a culture of secrecy – could be a powder keg for sexual violence. It’s a dynamic also seen in the military and on sports teams.

Hypermasculinity is not simply tied up in an individual’s behavior, but can become embedded within organizational cultures that reward toughness, dominance, risk-taking and silence.

In fraternities, these expectations may shape how members understand belonging and status. These issues may also discourage students from expressing vulnerability and seeking help.

Understanding these gendered and cultural dynamics is, I believe, essential to developing prevention efforts that address not only individual conduct, but also the organizational norms that allow harmful behaviors to persist.

Just before leaving town on Sept. 30, 2026, U.S. senators confirmed 10 new ambassadors. Among those nodded through before Congress closed for an extended midterm recess were new U.S. ambassadors for Kenya, Nicaragua, Malaysia and Kyrgyzstan.

(THE CONVERSATION) — Just before leaving town on Sept. 30, 2026, U.S. senators confirmed 10 new ambassadors. Among those nodded through before Congress closed for an extended midterm recess were new U.S. ambassadors for Kenya, Nicaragua, Malaysia and Kyrgyzstan.

That’s commendable – many of those countries hold geographical or strategic importance for U.S. diplomacy. But it still leaves 92 out of 196 ambassador jobs currently unfilled. In some of those cases, the White House has not sent names to Capitol Hill despite the second Trump administration being a year and a half into the job. In others, the Senate, which is controlled by the same party as the White House, hasn’t acted on the names put forward.

Regardless of the reason, as a former ambassador and an expert in the process of diplomacy, I find the current vacancies concerning. Among those embassies still without a top person in place are key partners for the U.S. – countries that Washington needs to achieve its security, economic and strategic objectives.

What makes these vacancies more worrying, in my view, is that they come amid other concerning developments in the State Department’s staffing of embassies.

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Politicizing diplomacy

Chief among them is the high percentage of politically appointed ambassadors relative to positions filled by career diplomats – that is, senior foreign service officers, usually with at least 20 years of diplomatic experience.

Though many countries send politicians abroad as ambassadors, America’s diplomatic service is unique in two ways. The percentage of U.S. ambassadors who are political appointees – those who haven’t followed a career civil service path – is higher than comparative countries across the world. Second, those political appointees are often donors with little to no government experience.

The practice has existed for decades, but in recent years the number of political appointees has increased. During the Obama administration, the percentage of political appointees was around 30%. The number rose to around 40% in the first Trump administration and the subsequent Biden administration.

But in Trump’s second term, some 80% of names the White House has sent to the Senate have been political.

And many of the people Trump has put forward don’t appear to have the credentials usually associated with holding important diplomatic positions. Rather, many are friends, associates or donors to Trump, often with little overseas experience or knowledge of the country they are going to.

Lee Lipton, ambassador to a key ally in the Philippines, is owner of a restaurant in Palm Beach – Florida Benny’s on the Beach – a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and a contributor to his political campaign. The ambassador to Greece is Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Trump adviser and ex-fiancée of his son Donald Jr.

The system of political appointees has always had an element of handing ambassadorships to friends and supporters. But what has changed under Trump is the range of positions now available. In the past, ambassadors to key countries like Chile, Israel, Peru, the Philippines, Turkey and Egypt, for example, have almost always been career appointees. This has changed under the second Trump administration.

Appointing noncareer diplomats to small, faraway nations has the additional problem that the chosen individual may not actually spend much time there. The rule of thumb has long been that ambassadors should spend no more than one month every year back in the United States. But that is compromised if a noncareer diplomat with expansive business ties in the U.S. is selected.

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The role of a deputy

A closely related problem is the State Department’s handling of an ambassador’s second in command, their deputy chiefs of missions – DCMs for short – under Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

During Trump’s first term in the White House, politically appointed ambassadors were often encouraged to swap out the DCMs they inherited from their predecessors. It meant going through a long hiring process, leaving those key jobs unfilled for months.

In 2025, the State Department went further, canceling the assignments of senior officers en route to take up embassy jobs and opening a new hiring process.

It formed part of a Trump purge of what many MAGA Republicans characterized as a “deep state” civil service. The reality is that DCMs fill a critically important role in helping political appointees navigate the bureaucracy and implement their policy ideas, as well as raising the occasional reality check.

With more politically appointed ambassadors – some of them with no relevant experience – having an experienced DCM can be the difference between success and failure.

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Looking for other friends

When you put all of these personnel changes together, the result is the degradation of what was once seen as one of the most effective diplomatic services in the world.

What makes this potentially more worrying is where the vacancies are. For example, Belarus and Bulgaria, neighbors to Russia and Ukraine, are without U.S. ambassadors. And important countries in the fight against terrorism or in geopolitical hot spots, such as Kuwait, Qatar and Mauritania, are in the same camp.

Other countries still without ambassadors include Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest nation and the most populous Muslim-majority country in the world; key Middle East ally Egypt and nuclear power Pakistan; and nations the U.S. needs to help manage inward migration, such us Haiti and Guatemala.

The problem of absent or inexperienced ambassadors goes both ways. It means Washington may not have a capable diplomatic figurehead in these countries to contact in times of need. There are also fewer avenues for host nations to successfully convey messages back to the U.S. administration.

When faced with absent ambassadors, amateurish political appointees and deputy mission chiefs who are very junior or career appointees with short resumes, host countries may conclude that they aren’t seen as important to the U.S. and start looking elsewhere for friends.

And the U.S. has hollowed out its ambassadorial corps at a time when it is facing growing international influence by the likes of Russia, China and Iran – rival nations hoping to capitalize on a perceived diplomatic void left by Washington.

For example, as the U.S. tries to contain Beijing’s influence in the Asia-Pacific region, Fiji, Indonesia and Laos remain without U.S. ambassadors. Similarly, China’s diplomatic relations with Pakistan – a former key security partner for Washington – have grown while the ambassadorial seat in Islamabad remains empty.

And former Soviet states including Georgia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan don’t have U.S. ambassadors even as Russia President Vladimir Putin attempts to consolidate Moscow’s regional influence.

In large areas of the world, such as Africa and the Pacific region, and in important areas of policy, the lights may be on in U.S. embassies, but nobody’s home. And that is a distinct problem for national security and strategic interests.

After high-level Trump administration officials said they might send armed officers to the polls during the upcoming midterm elections, and after months of administration efforts to wrest control of some aspects of voting from state officials and limit how people vote, there’s a lot of fear that armed federal officials will disrupt voting and even seize ballots.

By Danielle Friedman
University of Wisconsin-Madison

(THE CONVERSATION) — After high-level Trump administration officials said they might send armed officers to the polls during the upcoming midterm elections, and after months of administration efforts to wrest control of some aspects of voting from state officials and limit how people vote, there’s a lot of fear that armed federal officials will disrupt voting and even seize ballots. A number of civil rights and voter advocacy groups and labor unions have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration to bar any such presence, with one suit claiming that “threatening messaging and violent enforcement actions” by administration officials “have created a climate in which voters, especially voters of color, are intimidated and fearful of engaging in the democratic process.”

The Conversation asked scholar Danielle Friedman, legal director of the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School, to answer four fundamental questions about the law protecting voters’ rights at the polls as well as the protection of their ballots.

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What does the law say about armed officials at polling places?

Federal law directly prohibits federal troops or armed officers, including federal law enforcement agents, from appearing at polling places during an election.

Other federal laws, which more broadly prohibit any intimidation of, or interference with, voters may also be applied to keep armed officials from appearing at polling places.

Despite these clear restrictions, some federal officials have suggested publicly that they still may deploy armed federal officials to polling places during the upcoming midterm elections.

For that reason, it is important to remember that state laws also likely prohibit armed officials from appearing at polling places. The specific law in each state varies, but all states have some restrictions on behavior at or near polling locations that are intended to ensure that voters can cast a ballot free from intimidation.

Similar to federal law, some states have laws directly prohibiting armed officials at polling places. Others have more broad statutes prohibiting any kind of intimidating behavior.

Many states also prohibit any person from having a firearm at or near a polling location. These laws may apply to armed officials in the same way that they apply to other individuals.

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Can local police legitimately be at a polling site?

The answer to this question will depend on state law. But in many cases, local police may only be at a polling location if a local election official has specifically requested the presence of law enforcement.

That may happen if, for example, there is an emergency at the polling place and local police are called to help de-escalate the situation. In many states, when the local police are called to assist with a situation, they are required to follow the orders of the local election officials when they arrive.

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What should a person do if armed officials show up at polling places?

If a voter sees armed officials at a polling place, they should alert the election officials at the polling place right away. Election officials have specific procedures to follow to report the situation and have it appropriately handled in an efficient manner.

Depending on the nature of the situation, the voter may also want to document the behavior that they see and provide that information to the election official at the appropriate time.

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What laws apply to the seizure of ballots?

There are many laws that may ultimately apply to the seizure of ballots, but the most critical are the very specific laws in every state about the chain of custody of ballots.

Chain of custody refers to rules that make clear who can have access to ballots both before an election and after each ballot has been cast. The reason for these rules is obvious: Ensuring that only certain individuals have access to the ballots used in an election protects the integrity of that election and ensures that there is no interference from outside actors in the ultimate result.

A seizure of ballots by law enforcement would likely violate these chain of custody laws and could undermine the integrity of the election results that they are intended to protect.

A recent case in California helps to illustrate these issues. A sheriff in Riverside County seized hundreds of thousands of ballots cast in connection with a special election, claiming that there were anomalies in the results that had not been fully explained.

This action by the sheriff was challenged by, among others, voters in Riverside County who argued that it violated the state’s chain of custody rules. The California Supreme Court agreed.

Importantly, the state Supreme Court also noted that this does not mean that there is nothing to be done about allegations or issues related to an election. The law in California, and in all states, provides many options for citizens or officials in those cases – seizure of ballots by law enforcement officials is simply not one of them.

The seizure in Riverside County was in connection with a past election, but the case provides an important road map for courts that may be confronted with these issues in the context of an ongoing election in November. Adherence to the chain of custody laws is even more critical before an official result has been certified, and legal experts have encouraged judges to scrutinize warrant applications for ballots especially closely.

In the history of voter suppression in the United States, including attempts to stop Black and Latino people from voting, Republican tactics in the 1981 New Jersey gubernatorial race stand out.

(THE CONVERSATION) — In the history of voter suppression in the United States, including attempts to stop Black and Latino people from voting, Republican tactics in the 1981 New Jersey gubernatorial race stand out.

That November, voters in several cities saw posters at polling places printed in bright red letters: “WARNING. This area is being patrolled by the National Ballot Security Task Force.”

About 200 patrols were deployed statewide, many of them uniformed and carrying guns.

In Trenton, patrol members asked a Black voter for her registration card and turned her away when she didn’t produce it. Latino voters were prevented from voting in Vineland, while in Newark some voters were physically chased from the polls by patrolmen, one of whom warned a poll worker not to stay at her post after dark. Similar scenes played out in at least two other cities, Camden and Atlantic City.

Weeks later, after a recount, Republican Thomas Kean won election as governor by fewer than 1,800 votes.

Democrats, however, soon won a significant victory. With local civil rights activists, they discovered that the “ballot security” operation was a joint project of the state and national Republican committees. They filed suit in December 1981, charging Republicans with “efforts to intimidate, threaten and coerce duly qualified black and Hispanic voters.”

In November 1982, the case was settled when the Republican committees signed a federal consent decree – a court order applicable to activities anywhere in the U.S. – agreeing not to use race in selecting targets for ballot security activities and to refrain from deploying armed poll watchers.

That decree expired in 2018 after Democrats failed to convince a judge to renew it.

The 1981 voter suppression efforts resonate today in the midst of the Trump administration’s persistent efforts to suppress the vote and undermine trust in elections nationwide.

In May 2026, a PBS reporter asked President Donald Trump whether he would send the National Guard or ICE to polling places in the midterm elections.

“He did not rule it out,” wrote reporter Liz Landers.

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The Republican ‘ballot security’ plan

Considered an early referendum on Ronald Reagan’s presidency, New Jersey’s 1981 gubernatorial race featured Kean – with Roger Stone at the campaign’s helm – promising corporate tax cuts and relying heavily on Reagan’s endorsement.

State and national Republican party officials then devised a project they claimed would prevent Democratic cheating at the polls.

In the summer of 1981, the Republican National Committee sent an operative named John A. Kelly to New Jersey to run a ballot security effort. Kelly had previously served as one of the RNC’s liaisons to the Reagan White House.

In August 1981, under the guise of the National Ballot Security Taskforce, Kelly sent about 200,000 letters marked “return to sender” to voters in heavily Black and Latino districts. Those whose letters were returned had their names added to a list of voters to be challenged at the polls on Election Day, a tactic known as voter caging.

In the Newark area, Kelly produced a list of 20,000 voters whom he deemed potentially fraudulent. He then hired local operatives to organize patrols, ostensibly to keep such fraud at bay. To run the Newark operation, he hired Anthony Imperiale.

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Newark’s white vigilante

Imperiale, in turn, hired off-duty police officers and employees of his private business, the Imperiale Security Police, to patrol voting sites in the city.

The gun-toting, barrel-chested former Marine had first adopted the security role during Newark’s 1967 uprising – five days of protests and a deadly occupation of the city by police and the National Guard following the police beating of a Black cab driver. During the uprising, Imperiale organized patrols of his predominantly white neighborhood to keep “the riots” out.

Soon, Imperiale became a hero of white backlash politics. His opposition to police reform earned him widespread support from law enforcement. And his fight against Black housing development in Newark’s North Ward delighted many of his neighbors. By the end of the 1970s, Hollywood was making a movie based on his activities.

After serving as an independent in both houses of the state legislature, Imperiale became a Republican in 1979. Two years later, he campaigned with Kean.

Once in office, the new governor named Imperiale director of a new one-man state Office of Community Safety – an appointment often interpreted as reward for Imperiale’s leadership of the ballot efforts in Newark, but stymied when Democrats refused to fund the position.

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Outcome and legacy

Despite Kean’s slim margin of victory, Democrats at the time were careful not to claim that Republican voter suppression efforts had decided the election. In 2016, the former Democratic candidate claimed they did indeed make the difference.

Rather, the state and national Democratic committees brought suit against the Republican National Committee to ensure it couldn’t again use such methods anywhere. For nearly 40 years – through amendments and challenges – the resulting consent decree helped curtail voter suppression tactics.

After the decree’s expiration in 2018, Republicans ramped up their recruitment of poll watchers for the 2020 presidential election. After his loss in that election, Trump led a campaign aimed at discrediting the vote’s legitimacy, claiming fraud and irregularities that he’s been consistently unable to prove.

Since winning in 2024, Trump has led a comprehensive effort to discredit and suppress mail voting. And the Department of Justice, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon posted on X, has a “plan to send 1,000 federal election monitors to select locations around the country to observe the general election in November. This will be the largest monitoring effort in @theJusticeDept history!”

In addition to those efforts, CNN reports that “the Republican National Committee is training new ‘special monitors’ to scrutinize voting machines.”

This November, Republican tactics in 1981 are worth remembering. They demonstrate that the safeguarding of polling places from allegedly fraudulent voters and of public places from supposedly threatening people of color share not only a logic.

They also share a history.

In the heated news coverage of what’s at stake in the 2026 midterms, state supreme court races are drawing relatively little attention. Yet these are highly significant elections.

By Rachel Rebouché
The University of Texas at Austin

(THE CONVERSATION) — In the heated news coverage of what’s at stake in the 2026 midterms, state supreme court races are drawing relatively little attention. Yet these are highly significant elections.

Thirty-one states are holding supreme court elections in 2026, with voters nationwide picking judges to fill more than 60 open seats.

As a law professor whose research and writing focuses on reproductive health, I’m watching these races closely. That’s because in the coming years these courts will have the final word on many consequential legal fights around abortion and trans healthcare.

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State supreme court judges make high-stakes decisions

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending a half-century of federal constitutional protection for abortion, it handed this major issue back to the states. As a result, in addition to prompting ballot initiatives, the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has also spurred litigation in state courts.

These cases ask judges to discern, for example, whether state constitutions create a right to abortion – or, at least, prohibit restrictions on abortion access.

Moreover, in weighing the legality of abortion bans, state judges must determine specific issues of abortion access. Idaho’s high court recently approved Republican officials’ rewritten wording for a ballot initiative that would repeal the state’s abortion ban; advocates for the initiative argue that the language misrepresents Idaho’s abortion law.

In Indiana, the state Supreme Court recently heard arguments over whether a religious freedom law creates an exception to the state’s near-total abortion ban. The plaintiffs in that case argued that their faiths allowed or required the procedure in circumstances the ban currently forbids.

Increasingly, the U.S. Supreme Court has been handing questions concerning transgender rights back to states, too.

In June 2025, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in United States v. Skrmetti that Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors does not count as sex discrimination under the U.S. Constitution. 
Consequently, that and similar bans only need to pass the lowest level of judicial review; they no longer have to pass the higher bar of “strict scrutiny.”

This means lower courts can essentially rubber-stamp the bans that state legislatures have passed. In fact, the Skrmetti decision cleared the way for the roughly two dozen states with similar bans to keep enforcing them.

Skrmetti did not, however, require any state to pass such a law. And it does not address how far the ruling extends to adults or whether it applies to other related aspects of gender-affirming care, such as insurance coverage.

In other words, the people who now decide whether abortion restrictions stay on the books or whether a minor can get gender-affirming care are, in many cases, not justices sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court. In many cases, they will be state supreme court judges.

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North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Montana have races to watch

In Montana, judicial races could change the ideological bent of the state’s top court. Judicial elections in the state are technically nonpartisan, but Republicans see a chance to retake the state Supreme Court with judges they endorse.

In 2023, its Democrat-endorsed majority ruled that the state constitution protects abortion rights. It also determined that attempts to stop one class of health providers – advanced practice registered nurses – from performing abortions violated those rights.

Judges who upheld restrictions affecting residents’ reproductive rights will face voters this fall in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas. In some of these races, abortion is a live – and legally dynamic – issue.

North Carolina’s high court also leans heavily conservative. This year one of just two Democrats on the seven-judge panel – incumbent Democrat Anita Earls – is up for reelection. If she loses, the GOP would gain a near-total supermajority on North Carolina’s Supreme Court. That outcome would likely cement the party’s edge on key political matters for years to come.

Michigan looks like the mirror image of North Carolina. All justices there are officially nonpartisan, but Democrat-backed justices hold a 6-1 majority on the seven-member court. Chief Justice Megan Cavanagh and Justice Noah Hood – both Democrats – are up for reelection this fall.

Democrats are hoping to retain their edge, in part to keep abortion protected. Voters enshrined abortion rights directly into Michigan’s Constitution in 2022, and the state’s highest court has already interpreted that amendment to dismiss abortion-related restrictions.

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Ohio protects abortion, but courts will decide how much

Ohio is a powerful example of what is at stake in this year’s state supreme court races. Republicans hold a 6-1 majority on the state’s high court, a dominant position built over successive election cycles in 2022 and 2024.

In the 2026 midterms, Ohio’s only Democratic state Supreme Court justice, Jennifer Brunner, is defending her seat against a Republican challenger. If Brunner loses, Ohio’s highest court could become a unanimous conservative bench – one that will likely determine the outcome of high-profile cases related to both abortion access and gender-affirming care.

Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2023 protecting abortion access. The amendment establishes that individuals have the right to make their own reproductive decisions. The language covers contraception, fertility treatment, continuing a pregnancy, miscarriage care and abortion up to fetal viability. It also asserts that the state generally cannot interfere with these decisions.

Now, lower courts are litigating whether restrictions on abortion access – for instance, the state’s 24-hour waiting period and ban on telehealth for medication abortion – can survive scrutiny under that amendment.

The Ohio Supreme Court may eventually decide that case. In my assessment, an even more conservative Ohio court might be inclined to read the voter-approved abortion amendment as narrowly as possible.

Ohio’s Supreme Court is similarly poised to make big decisions on trans rights. For example, it could uphold the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors. That would reverse a 2025 appellate ruling that had struck down the law, which was passed over the veto of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine.

Even if they don’t change the partisan makeup of these courts, elections for state supreme court seats in places such as Ohio may matter for the scope and breadth of rulings that claw back individual rights. Or they may foretell how a conservative near-supermajority might lock in abortion and trans restrictions for a generation.

Whoever wins these judicial races in November will not just be interpreting the law. In a real sense, they will be writing the next chapter of it.