Challenge to Indiana judge selection prompts racial divide in Seventh Circuit responses

CHICAGO (CN) — The Seventh Circuit on Thursday heard arguments over an effective racial division in Indiana's judicial election laws, which elicited widely different reactions from the appellate panelists hearing the case.

At stake is how Indiana structures its Superior Court elections in three of the state's most diverse counties: Lake, Marion and St. Joseph. Voters in these judicial circuits — home to nearly half of Indiana's nonwhite residents, including two-thirds of its Black residents — can only vote on whether to retain state judges who are otherwise selected by a judicial nominating committee and appointed by the governor. The state first implemented the system in Lake County in 1973.

Indiana's other 89 counties, by contrast, enjoy open Superior Court elections — though a nominating committee also plays a role in choosing candidates in the state's Allen County. According to an affidavit from the Indiana Secretary of State's chief legal counsel Jerold Bonnet, such disparate rules were enacted to overcome Indiana attorneys' concerns about partisanship in Indiana trial courts.

https://www.courthousenews.com/challenge-to-indiana-judge-selection-prompts-racial-divide-in-seventh-circuit-responses/