Republicans Can’t Afford To Sleep On Georgia’s Supreme Court Elections

The state of Georgia is about to hold elections for several pivotal state Supreme Court races next week. But you wouldn’t know it by listening to national figures within the Republican Party.

Alongside its 2026 primary elections, the Peach State is slated to hold races for three Georgia Supreme Court seats on Tuesday, May 19. While officially “nonpartisan,” the cast of political characters lining up behind the candidates makes it fairly clear what side of the political spectrum they fall on.

Next week’s elections will see incumbent Justices Charlie Bethel and Sarah Hawkins Warren — both of whom were appointed by former GOP Gov. Nathan Deal — face off against Miracle Rankin and Jen Jordan, respectively. Fellow incumbent Justice Ben Land, an appointee of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, is running unopposed.

Bethel and Warren have garnered the support of Kemp and other Republicans, while Rankin and Jordan have received the backing of former President Barack Obama, Democrats, and other pro-abortion forces like Planned Parenthood Action. Other notorious left-wing groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have launched six-figure spending campaigns “on radio advertisements and direct-to-voter mailers” to “educat[e] voters about where candidates stand on key civil liberties and civil rights issues” — including so-called “abortion rights” and “voting rights.”

The Georgia Supreme Court has been asked to handle many significant policy issues in recent years, with abortion being among them. And it’s fairly obvious that Rankin and Jordan are gunning to use their sought-after positions to advance their political allies’ cause if elected.

It’s an observation Advancing American Freedom’s Hans von Spakovsky made in a recent James Magazine article. The elections specialist noted how Rankin and Jordan are “abortion activists” and “running to create a nonexistent right to abortion in the state constitution and, no doubt, other legal fantasies of the radical left.”

That’s a significant detail when considering the Georgia Supreme Court’s recent role in handling litigation contesting the state’s pro-life law. In late 2024, the high court blocked in large part a lower court ruling that prohibited the Peach State’s six-week limit on abortion from going into effect.

Outside of abortion, the Peach State’s high court has also been asked to weigh in on key election-related matters in recent years.

A day before the 2024 election, the Georgia Supreme Court stepped in to prevent Democrat-run Cobb County from violating state law by accepting and counting more than 3,000 late-arriving absentee ballots. The ruling was 5-3, with Bethel and Warren once again in the majority.

Bethel and Warren were also part of the Georgia Supreme Court’s 4-3 majority decision that upheld the disqualification of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from her lawfare against Donald Trump and nearly two dozen Republicans. As The Federalist reported, the high court rejected Willis’ appeal of a lower court ruling that barred her and her team “from prosecuting Trump and the aforementioned Republicans following revelations that exposed acts of impropriety among the DA and her get-Trump allies.”

Rankin and Jordan victories in the May 19 elections wouldn’t give outright control of the Peach State’s highest court to leftists. Should they prevail, it would move the court from an 8-1 conservative majority to 6-3.

It would, however, put Democrats in a position to flip control of the court two years from now. As noted by Bolts magazine, “Three more Georgia justices come up for election in 2028, meaning that a victory from this year’s challengers could even open a longshot path for a liberal majority on the court ahead of that year’s presidential election.”

Republicans cannot afford to lose more state Supreme Court races than they already have. The party’s inaction on effective GOTV measures has already proven costly in battlegrounds like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, whose high courts are now dominated by liberal majorities.

As shown above, these courts are instrumental in handling litigation involving some of the most important issues in the country. Ignoring their importance and surrendering them to the left would have disastrous consequences for years to come.

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Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics and RealClearHealth. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood