Ohio Right to Life, a Columbus-based anti-abortion group established in 1967, came out against a plan to have Ohio Supreme Court justices appointed through the system known as merit selection. The group was an early major organization to oppose merit selection in Ohio, where Chief Justice Thomas Moyer led the push for the change in 2009.
Under merit selection, a nonpartisan commission reviews candidates for a judicial vacancy and sends the governor a list of the best-qualified candidates. The governor appoints a judge from the list, and the judge later stands in a retention election in which voters decide whether the judge stays in office.
In November 2009, Moyer co-hosted a Forum on Judicial Selection to discuss amending the way the court’s justices are selected. Participants included the state bar, the Ohio chapter of the League of Women Voters, legislative leaders, academic experts and groups representing business and labor. Moyer had led an earlier statewide review of judicial elections, the 2003 Next Steps conference.
Moyer had also worked on proposals to increase reporting of judicial campaign contributions and to raise the minimum professional qualifications required of judicial candidates. He chaired the Conference of Chief Justices’ Task Force on Politics and Judicial Selection, and in 2009 he was appointed to the advisory committee of the Sandra Day O’Connor Judicial Selection Initiative.
Ohio voters chose Supreme Court justices through partisan primaries and nonpartisan general elections for six-year terms, and the governor filled midterm vacancies by appointment. Voters rejected proposals to switch to commission-based appointment in 1938 and 1987, both times by a 2-1 margin.
Gavel Grab first reported this story on Dec. 15, 2009, when the site was a project of Justice at Stake. The original post is preserved by the Internet Archive. This account of the same events was written from the public record.
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