Voting rights group calls on conservative PAC to renounce misleading Supreme Court mailers

by Peter Hall, Pennsylvania Capital-Star
October 14, 2025

A voting rights watchdog group called on a conservative PAC backed by Republican financier Jeffrey Yass to rescind and apologize for a campaign mailer falsely pinning blame on the state Supreme Court for an unconstitutionally gerrymandered congressional district map.

The Republican-controlled General Assembly’s 2011 congressional redistricting map drew national attention for its oddly shaped districts, including one nicknamed “Goofy kicking Donald Duck” because of its resemblance to the Disney cartoon characters. 

That map is featured on a mailer sent to homes across the commonwealth last month urging voters to “Term limit the liberal Supreme Court,” as Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty and David Wecht run for retention next month.

The nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania was the lead plaintiff in a 2017 lawsuit challenging the legislature’s map. The case ultimately resulted in the Supreme Court ordering the state to use its alternative for the 2018 mid-term elections. 

“We litigated it, and the result was a court ruling that resulted in a map that was more fair, cleaner, more appropriate, more constitutional,” League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania President Susan Gobreski said in a call with reporters Thursday.

Gobreski and others say the mailer is misleading and threatens judicial independence.

“Everyone has the right to an opinion, but no one has the right to lie to voters and call it democracy,” Gobreski said. “They should really pull these mailers and apologize to voters.”

The mailer shows the 2011 map with two of its districts sprawling over multiple counties circled in red. Next to the map is the message “The liberal Supreme Court gerrymandered our congressional districts to help Democrats win.”

In fact, the court first ordered the General Assembly to produce a map that passed constitutional muster without putting partisan interests ahead of neutral lines that avoided splitting counties and municipalities. When the legislature and then-Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, failed to agree on an alternative, the court provided its own.

The GOP challenged the court’s map in federal court but was unsuccessful in overturning it. The redistricting resulted in a net gain of three congressional districts for Democrats, changing the state’s representation in the U.S. House from a 12-6 Republican majority to a 9-9 tie.

With the election three weeks away, the League of Women Voters is urging voters to seek trustworthy information about the justices and the election from nonpartisan organizations like itself and the Pennsylvania Bar Association, which has an independent commission that evaluates every candidate for statewide judicial office. It has rated all three “recommended for retention.”

Dickinson College President John E. Jones III, who is a retired U.S. district judge, said judicial retention elections, which coincide with municipal elections, generally have low voter turnout and those who vote often know little about the judges or their records. 

Jones noted the only time a Pennsylvania justice has lost a retention vote was 2005, when voters responded to the midnight pay raise that the General Assembly approved earlier that year by broadly voting against incumbents. Justice Russel Nigro was not retained by a narrow margin, while Justice Sandra Schultz Newman was retained with 54% of the vote. Retention vote margins are typically in the range of 60% to 75%. 

“It had nothing to do with Justice Nigro’s bona fides as a justice, but rather the prevailing political climate,” Jones told the Capital-Star. “I’m concerned that if the three justices who are subject to the retention votes are simply unelected because of their party affiliations, then we’ve missed the point of what the retention elections are supposed to be.”

Donohue, Dougherty and Wecht were elected as Democrats in 2015, defeating three Republican nominees in the only election where three new justices have been elected in the court’s more-than-300-year history. A defeat in this year’s retention election would result in competitive elections in 2027 and a chance to swing the court’s ideological balance in favor of conservatives.

The mailer was paid for by Commonwealth Leaders Fund, a political action committee whose treasurer Matthew Brouilette is linked with two other groups spending money to influence the Supreme Court election. 

Yass, the founder of trading firm Susquehanna International Group, contributed $1.25 million to his pro-school choice Students First PAC this year, according to campaign finance reports. Last year Yass donated $16 million to the PAC, chaired by SIG Counsel Geoff Bushko. 

This year and last, most of the money flowed to Brouilette’s PAC, Commonwealth Children’s Choice Fund. The Children’s Choice Fund in 2024 gave nearly $12 million to Commonwealth Leaders Fund, much of which was spent during the presidential election, according to campaign finance records.

Commonwealth Leaders Fund has spent about $185,000 on expenses labeled “direct mail” or “mailing” so far this year, according to campaign finance reports, the most recent of which was due Sept. 15. Reports for the other groups, Commonwealth Partners and Citizens for Term Limits, whose names appear on ads and mailers about the retention election, were not available online.

A spokesperson for Susquehanna International Group who returned a call seeking comment from Yass said he had no comment. Commonwealth Partners, which administers the PACs, did not respond to a request for comment.

In recent years, spending in Supreme Court elections in Pennsylvania and elsewhere have set new records year upon year. Candidates in the 2015 election where Donohue, Dougherty and Wecht were elected spent $15.8 million. That was surpassed in 2023 when now-Justice Daniel McCaffery and his Republican opponent spent more than $19.5 million, which included nearly $4.5 million from Yass’ PAC. 

The same year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court race shattered the national record with more than $100 million in spending, including nearly $30 million from Elon Musk, the world’s richest man..  

The heavy political spending in Pennsylvania’s judicial elections perverts the intent of the retention process, said Deborah Gross, executive director of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, a nonprofit that advocates for court access.

Pennsylvania adopted its system of electing jurists and retaining them for subsequent terms after the 1967 constitutional convention, which modernized the commonwealth’s foundational document. It followed decades of criticism over the process of electing judges and justices, which had been in place since 1850.

The new system would combine direct election by the people with a nonpartisan, non-competitive re-election that spared incumbent judges the rigors of a campaign while allowing the public to decide on judges’ fitness to continue serving based on their prior term.

But Gross said the system wasn’t intended to take the judges’ interpretation of law into account.

“If someone is not doing their job properly, if they’re not showing up for court, if they’re doing bad acts, if they have judicial conduct issues. Those are reasons why someone should not be retained,” Gross said. “Judges are doing their jobs when they’re interpreting the law.”

Jones, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2002, presided over landmark cases challenging the teaching of “intelligent design” in public schools and Pennsylvania’s ban on same-sex marriage. Jones found both to be unconstitutional.

“It is problematic, I think, for jurists to be judged on one or two cases,” he said, adding that most voters don’t have the time or resources to consider the justices’ records in total. “They’re apt to potentially make a reactionary vote. It’s fueled by perhaps a misleading ad and just a lack of knowledge about the justices.”

The League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania is considering how to respond to the Commonwealth Leaders Fund mailing, Executive Director Amy Widestrom said, noting that some voters have already received mail ballots and are making their decisions.

In addition to the bar association’s ratings, the league and Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts hosted a “fireside chat” with the three justices that is available to view on YouTube. The league has also worked to aggregate trusted information about the judicial election.

“There’s a lot of really good nonpartisan information out there, and I know it’s hard to find, so we’re trying to consolidate it all into our website, and our partners are doing the same,” Widestrom said.

Pennsylvania Capital-Star is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Tim Lambert for questions: info@penncapital-star.com.