GOP Nets Supreme Court Seat With Brobson Victory

Amid light turnout around the state, Republican Kevin Brobson beat Democrat Maria McLaughlin to serve a 10-year term on Pennsylvania’s highest court.

HARRISBURG — Republicans in Pennsylvania saw success in voters’ choices Tuesday to fill open seats on statewide appeals courts, including winning a marquee race for a seat on the state Supreme Court that nevertheless will not change the Democrats’ majority on the state’s high court.

Amid light turnout around the state, Republican Kevin Brobson beat Democrat Maria McLaughlin to serve a 10-year term on Pennsylvania’s highest court.

Brobson, 50, a judge for more than a decade on the lower statewide Commonwealth Court, will replace the outgoing Republican Justice Thomas Saylor, who has hit the mandatory retirement age of 75.

In recent years, Brobson has handled key cases on guns and elections, including penning a congressional redistricting decision that was promptly overturned by the Democratic-majority Supreme Court in 2018.

He will join a court that has been at the center of major political disputes in the past year and a half, handling cases over the hotly contested 2020 presidential election as well as the legality of how Gov. Tom Wolf used his authority to respond to the global pandemic.

Democrats will keep a 5-2 majority on the court.

In a race for a seat on Superior Court, former Chester County and state prosecutor Megan Sullivan, a Republican, beat Democrat Timika Lane, a Philadelphia judge. The court handles appeals from county courts in criminal and civil cases.

Two seats were open on Commonwealth Court, and Republican Stacy Wallace, a lawyer from Bradford County, won one of the seats as the top vote-getter of four candidates. The court handles cases involving state government and local governments.

Election officials reported no significant problems, while turnout was expected to hit 25% to 30% of registered voters.

The judges who win could end up ruling in an array of high-profile cases pending in state courts, from abortion rights to public school funding to whether the state’s mail-in voting law is constitutional.