Republican Party of Minnesota v. White
The Supreme Court struck down a Minnesota rule barring candidates for judicial office from announcing their views on disputed legal and political issues, ruling that the restriction violated the First Amendment.
The decision makes clear that once a state chooses to let voters elect its judges, it cannot muzzle candidates from discussing the very legal and political issues voters care about, reshaping how judicial election campaigns can be regulated nationwide.
“We have never allowed the government to prohibit candidates from communicating relevant information to voters during an election.”
The Court's central rejection of Minnesota's argument that judicial elections justify restricting candidate speech.
How it got here: A federal district court and the Eighth Circuit both upheld Minnesota's announce clause against a First Amendment challenge, and the Supreme Court agreed to review the case.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Minnesota elects its judges and had adopted an "announce clause" barring judicial candidates from stating their views on disputed legal or political issues. Gregory Wersal, running for the state supreme court, wanted to criticize past court rulings and discuss his legal views but feared professional discipline. He and the state Republican Party sued, arguing the rule silenced candidates and left voters uninformed about who they were electing.
The question before the Court
Could Minnesota bar candidates for judicial office from announcing their views on disputed legal and political issues during their campaigns?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that Minnesota could not bar judicial candidates from announcing their views on disputed legal and political issues while campaigning. Applying strict scrutiny, the Court found the state's justifications for the rule, framed around protecting judicial "impartiality," either did not describe a legitimate interest (since judges inevitably have views on the law) or were undermined by the rule's own gaps, since judges could freely discuss the same issues before running and after taking office.
Because the state failed to show the restriction was narrowly tailored to a genuinely compelling interest, the announce clause could not stand. The Court did not disturb Minnesota's separate ban on candidates making outright "pledges or promises" about how they would rule, since that rule was not challenged in this case.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
States that elect judges can no longer easily silence candidates from discussing controversial legal issues on the campaign trail. Voters may now hear more directly how judicial candidates think about the law, but the ruling also fueled separate concerns, voiced by two justices, about whether judicial elections themselves put pressure on judges to rule with reelection in mind.
What changes now
The case was reversed and sent back to the lower courts for further proceedings consistent with the ruling, meaning Minnesota could no longer enforce the announce clause against judicial candidates. The decision left open how other states' similar restrictions on judicial campaign speech would fare, and courts, bar associations, and state judiciaries continued adjusting their codes of judicial conduct in its wake.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether Minnesota's separate rule barring candidates from making "pledges or promises" about how they would rule in future cases was constitutional — that provision was not challenged here. The ruling also does not address whether states may restrict the speech of sitting judges apart from their role as campaign candidates.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice O'Connor
Justice O'Connor joined the majority but wrote separately to argue that the very practice of electing judges — apart from any speech restriction — undermines judicial impartiality, because elected judges face pressure from public opinion, reelection concerns, and the need to raise campaign funds, sometimes from parties or lawyers with cases before them.
Concurrence — Justice Kennedy
Justice Kennedy agreed with the outcome but argued the Court should go further: content-based restrictions on political speech that fall outside recognized First Amendment exceptions should be struck down automatically, without balancing narrow tailoring against compelling interests. He stressed that candidate speech is at the core of the First Amendment and that judicial integrity, while a vital interest, cannot justify censoring what voters hear from candidates.
Dissent — Justice Stevens
“But in litigation, issues of law or fact should not be determined by popular vote; it is the business of judges to be indifferent to unpopularity.”Stevens's argument that judges must be shielded from the pressures that shape political campaigns.
Justice Stevens argued elected judges occupy a fundamentally different role than political officials because it is the judiciary's job to be indifferent to popular opinion, not responsive to it. He contended Minnesota had a compelling interest in barring candidates from announcing views that suggest how they would rule, and criticized the majority's reasoning as failing to grasp the distinct nature of judicial office.
Dissent — Justice Ginsburg
Justice Ginsburg argued judicial elections are meaningfully different from elections for political office because judges are not representatives who should be responsive to constituents, but neutral appliers of law. She argued the announce clause was narrowly targeted, did not stifle robust campaign speech as the majority claimed, and was closely tied to due process protections against judges who might feel pressure to rule consistently with campaign statements to keep their jobs.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied strict scrutiny, the toughest First Amendment test, which required the state to prove the announce clause was narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest, because the rule restricted speech based on its content and touched speech about candidates' qualifications, an area at the heart of political debate.
- The Court broke down what 'impartiality' could mean: freedom from bias toward a specific party (already protected through other doctrines), lack of any preconceived views on legal questions (not realistic or even desirable in a judge), and openmindedness to being persuaded in a pending case.
- Testing the rule against the goal of openmindedness, the Court found it so underinclusive that it undercut the state's own rationale — judges may freely discuss and even publish views on legal issues before running for office and after taking the bench, so barring only campaign-trail statements did little to protect openmindedness.
- The Court also looked at history and found no long, unbroken tradition supporting such speech bans; for most of the country's history, judicial candidates freely debated legal and political issues while campaigning.
- Because Minnesota failed to show the announce clause was narrowly tailored to any of the compelling interests it identified, the restriction on judicial candidates' campaign speech could not survive strict scrutiny.