Ohio Supreme Court layout could change with election results

With the results of Tuesday’s general election, the Ohio Supreme Court could become a 7-0 fully Republican bench, keep the status quo of one Democratic justice, or see a slight shift with a second Democrat.

Two justices are attempting to defend their seats: Republican Justice Dan Hawkins and Democratic Justice Jennifer Brunner.

Should Hawkins and Brunner defend their seats, the court would remain a 6-1 Republican majority. If Brunner loses to her Republican opponent, the court would then be a full Republican panel. If Hawkins is defeated, his Democratic opponent would make the bench a 5-2 Republican majority.

The Ohio Supreme Court races are listed under partisan labels on ballots due to a law passed in 2021 by the Republican majority Ohio General Assembly. Justices and judges who ran for the seats still spent significant time on the campaign trail promoting their impartiality and deference to state laws, along with judicial independence as a vital part of their branch of government.

Justices on the state’s highest court are the last arbiters for appeals from lower state courts, and they consider cases that contain questions about violations of the Ohio Constitution. The most recent panel of justices has seen topics ranging from redistricting, data centers, and education, to abortion, victim’s rights, and gender-affirming care.

Brunner is the only statewide elected Democrat currently in office. Her opponent on Tuesday is a former Franklin County Common Pleas judge, Republican Colleen O’Donnell.

O’Donnell is also a former immigration judge, who presided over asylum cases in Laredo, Texas. As part of her campaign, she touted the fact that she never granted asylum for anyone during her tenure.

The Republican won a tight primary election in a crowded field that included appeals court judges. She and her opponents in the primary support “originalism,” a judicial method that promotes seeing the U.S. Constitution and other founding documents as concrete ideas, and judging cases based on views the writers had on the documents when they were written.

“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 told the Capital Journal in May.

The former common pleas and immigration judge served in the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, clerked for a federal judge and worked in private practice before being appointed to serve as judge in the Franklin County Common Pleas Court. She became an immigration judge after she left the Franklin County court in 2023.

Brunner has been on the bench since 2021, and has been the sole Democrat since the 2024 defeat of former justices Michael Donnelly and Melody Stewart. Before coming to the supreme court, she was a judge on the 10th District Court of Appeals, and the Franklin County Common Pleas Court. She also served as Ohio Secretary of State.

The justice is currently suing the state to repeal the law that applied partisan labels to the supreme court races.

Brunner told the Capital Journal before the election that she sees it as a First Amendment issue which causes voters to assume she agrees wholesale with the Democratic platform.

“And I’m not in in a position to say, ‘well, it’s more nuanced here,’ or ‘no, it’s not the same here,’ or even ‘yes, it is the same,’ because I’ve got the code of judicial conduct,” Brunner said in August.

First District Court of Appeals Judge Marilyn Zayas decided to fight to the seat currently held by Hawkins. As her Democratic campaign moved past the primaries, she said she felt a different energy in the 2026 election.

“I’m seeing how we are losing faith in our court because of politics, and politics has no place in our Ohio Supreme Court,” Zayas said at the Ohio Democratic Party’s primary event in May.

Hawkins was elected in 2024, taking over for fellow Republican Justice Joe Deters. Deters chose not to run for re-election, but to run for the seat that was held by Justice Melody Stewart. He previously served on the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas.

On social media, he campaigned with the idea that there would be no special treatment or “gray areas” in his method of judging.

“The moment justice becomes selective it stops being justice,” a post on his Facebook page stated. “That is a line this court will never cross while I’m on the bench.”