Challenger to incumbent Ohio Supreme Court justice touts ‘originalism,’ strict immigration rulings

Former Judge Colleen O’Donnell, the Republican challenger hoping to unseat the Ohio Supreme Court’s only remaining Democratic justice, has been emphasizing her work as an immigration judge and her “originalism” stance in her campaign.

Democratic Justice Jennifer Brunner won her seat in 2020. Ohio Republican lawmakers made the races for the state’s highest court openly partisan starting in 2022 with the addition of party labels. Since then, Republicans have defeated two other incumbent Democrats to take 6-1 control over the court, with only Brunner remaining. Brunner has filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the politicization of the court.

If elected, O’Donnell has pledged to maintain “judicial restraint” while interpreting the law based on what she interprets as the meaning the law writers intended at the time.

“I do not take the view that the Constitution, for example, is a living, breathing document, and so I honor both substantive and procedural judicial restraint,” O’Donnell said in a May interview.

The Capital Journal reached out to the O’Donnell campaign multiple times requesting a post-primary interview, but the campaign refused. A spokesperson for the O’Donnell campaign referred to comments made in a previous interview O’Donnell did with the Capital Journal prior to the May primary, but follow-up requests with specific questions did not receive a response.

The former judge, and daughter of retired Ohio Supreme Court Justice Terrence O’Donnell, beat out a crowded field filled with appellate court judges. She took 32% of the vote, more than 280,000 votes in total, according to official results from the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office. The May primary election had a 22.68% voter turnout rate.

O’Donnell’s first job out of law school was serving with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, before she clerked for a federal judge, spent time in private practice, and landed as a judge in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, where she appointed to serve after a retirement in May 2013. She served in the role until 2023, before being defeated in a re-election effort.

A new opportunity came about in the summer of that year, when she began presiding over asylum cases as a federal immigration judge, assigned to serve in Laredo, Texas.

“While I honored my oath and obligation to interpret the law with integrity and to approach every case with an open mind, I never granted asylum a single time,” O’Donnell told the Capital Journal in May.

In a post to her official campaign Facebook page, O’Donnell said she served as an immigration judge during what she called the “Biden border crisis,” in which she “enforced federal law precisely as written, finding zero cases to meet the necessarily high bar for asylum, and consistently ordering removals of illegal aliens.”

O’Donnell has said she has “always been interested and motivated by public service, particularly through the judiciary,” and she thinks “partisan politics really has no place in the courthouse.”

“Regardless of my personal, emotional feelings about what I think the law should say, or what might make it better, or what might make it worse, I’m quite comfortable with how to compartmentalize, how to honor the oath that any judge should take to simply interpret the law, rather than rewrite the law,” she said in a May interview.

Endorsements are a source of pride for O’Donnell, who told the Capital Journal before the primary that “endorsements can speak to the values of the candidate and of the endorsing agents.”

Recently on social media, she touted endorsements from Ohio’s Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, U.S. Rep. Dave Taylor, and U.S. Rep. Warren Davidson.

The voter registration deadline for Ohio’s Nov. 3 election is Oct. 5, and requests for absentee ballots must be received by the boards of elections by Oct. 27.

Absentee ballots must be postmarked by Nov. 2, received in a dropbox by Nov. 3, or received by the boards of elections by Nov. 7. Early voting occurs from Oct. 6 to Nov. 1.