The Most Consequential Races in Texas That You Might Not Be Following
Lauren Miller's story has become a familiar tale in Texas: A woman, facing complications that put her life at risk during pregnancy, was forced to seek reproductive care out of state because of extreme abortion laws. In Miller's case, she was pregnant with twins. When it became clear that one would not survive, the nonviable fetus also became a threat to the other, healthy baby.
Miller later became one of 22 women to sue the state in Zurawski v. Texas, a 2023 lawsuit that sought to clarify medical exceptions to the state's abortion ban, under which doctors performing abortions could be penalized with as many as 99 years in prison, more than $100,000 in fines, and the loss of their state medical license. In May, the Texas Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that abortions were not permitted in situations where the fetus had a lethal condition and would not survive, unless the mother also had a life-threatening condition . However, the court refused to clarify just how dire the stakes have to become in order to permit doctors to perform an abortions. "How dead do we have to be?" asked Miller, who said she was headed toward kidney failure before she finally elected to seek the care she needed in Colorado—what ultimately amounted to a single injection.
Now, several of the plaintiffs in Zurawski v. Texas are working to unseat three Texas Supreme Court justices who are up for reelection this November: Jimmy Blacklock, Jane Bland, and John Devine, all of whom were involved in the ruling. While ten other states are voting on abortion policy via ballot measure, no such option exists in Texas . The women believe the Supreme Court races could prove critical for the future of Texans' access to reproductive health care, as the Legislature mulls further restrictions. "This is a life-or-death race for us," said Miller, an eighth generation Texan who lives in the Dallas area. "The only way to try and protect our lives and to try and get some reasonable judicial decisions and put pressure on the legislature is to change the judges."
Find Out, a political action committee spearheaded by Gina Ortiz Jones, the former undersecretary to the U.S. Air Force and two-time congressional candidate, has launched an ad campaign that shares the stories of these women. While Republicans have won every race for Texas Supreme Court since now-U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat, joined the bench in 1989, Jones is optimistic the races could be competitive if made into a referendum on abortion. A poll conducted by Global Strategy Group found that 90 percent of Texans support abortion in cases where the life of the mother is at risk, including 84 percent of Texans who said they're voting for Trump.
Texas is one of eight states that hold partisan elections for their supreme courts. If a vacancy emerges when a justice retires, the governor of Texas—in this case, Greg Abbott, who also once served as a member of the court—appoints a replacement. The nine members serve six-year terms, acting as the final say on civil cases occurring in the state.
Recently, the court's high-profile rulings have tended to align closely with Abbott's own political ideology; the nine members, for example, ruled that Abbott had legal authority to forbid local mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic and ruled that parents don't have the constitutional right to seek gender-affirming care for their children. The court also ruled against Dallas mother of two, Kate Cox, who attempted to seek an emergency medical abortion for a fetus with a fatal diagnosis.
While in theory, the judiciary is premised impartiality, in Texas, the scales of justice often seem tipped. Devine, who was elected to the bench in 2012, has a long history of activism on anti-abortion rights causes; in previous campaigns, he highlighted his wife's high-risk pregnancy , which doctors said would likely end in the death of both mother and child. They decided to continue the pregnancy to term; his wife survived but the baby died an hour after birth. On the campaign trail, he boasted that he'd been arrested 37 times for protesting outside of abortion clinics. "Before I ever got into politics, my convictions were forged in the crucible of the pro-life movement," Devine said in a campaign speech.
Where is the justice?" said Miller. "How could somebody possibly be impartial when they're coming into a case where their biases are something they campaign on?"
It's not just those with a personal stake in Texas abortion laws, who see the pitfalls of the system. "Our system of partisan judicial elections is inherently flawed," said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University. "We've created a system where the incentives for the judges are to behave in a partisan manner because that's the most reliable route to win their primary—and for virtually all our judges across the state, winning the primary is tantamount to winning the state election."
A champion of the religious right, Devine is endorsed by Attorney General Ken Paxton, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and anti-abortion rights lobbying group Texas Alliance for Life. He's faced criticism for his record of absenteeism this term, missing 60 percent of the oral arguments that the Supreme Court heard; he was even absent during the hearing for the Zurawski case, though he later participated in the ruling. (All but one of his colleagues on the court has perfect attendance this term.) Devine has called the separation of church and state a "myth," and in audio that was leaked earlier this year, in which he addressed a small group of East Texas voters, railed against his Republican colleagues on the bench, calling them "brainwashed." He accused the all-GOP state criminal court of appeals of being controlled by "RINOs" [Republicans in Name Only] and "trans-Republicans." In March, he survived his Republican primary challenge to Judge Brian Walker by a 0.9 percent margin.
This November, Devine will face off against his Democratic opponent Christine Vinh Weems, a sitting Harris County district judge and former trial attorney. The daughter of Vietnamese immigrants who fled Saigon and settled in Spring, Texas, Weems signed a temporary restraining order that would have delayed the start of a trigger ban on abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Elsewhere on the ballot, incumbent Blacklock is running against DaSean Jones, a Houston district judge and an Army veteran, who champions bail reform and is endorsed by the Texas Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation. "I don't have to guess or wonder how Justice Blacklock is going to decide cases because of his proven record of fighting for pro-life causes," Abbott once said of Blacklock, who previously worked as general counsel to him. Blacklock joined the Supreme Court of Texas bench at age 37. Texans for Lawsuit Reform, a powerful pro-tort reform political interest group and major donor to conservatives, has given $20,000 to his campaign. He's also endorsed by various anti-abortion rights groups, such as Texas Alliance for Life and Texas Right to Life Committee
Bland, one of three women on the Texas Supreme Court, and one of the most recent Abbott appointees, was the justice who wrote the opinion on the Zurawski case. A former editor of the Texas Law Review, she was appointed as state judge by then-Governor George Bush, then to the First Court of Appeals by Rick Perry. She's also endorsed by Texas Alliance for Life, and many in the oil and gas industry. Her opponent, Bonnie Lee Goldstein, sits on the Fifth District Court of Appeals.
Though flipping the seats—or even just one—would not impact majority rule, Jones of Find Out insists "it would send a very strong message not only to the bench but to the rest of the country." She added, "once that happens in our state, we all know that resets all expectations of Texas."
For Miller, it's not just political—it's personal. "This is our opportunity to hold these folks accountable," she said. "Our lives are on the line."
