Forged in fire judges
William O’Neill, a Democrat who served with O’Connor on the court from 2013 to 2019, said she was the justice he wound up voting with the most. “No amount of public criticism is going to change her mind if she feels that she’s right in the position she’s taking.”
She’s got sharp elbows,” said Paul Pfeifer, a Republican who served on the supreme court with O’Connor from when she joined in 2003 until he retired in 2017. In 2020, just before the presidential election, she blasted the state Republican party for accusing a local judge of colluding with Democrats, saying the attack was “disgraceful and deceitful”. She has called for less partisan influence in the way judges are elected in the state. She has backed criminal justice and bail reform, as other Ohio Republicans are pushing to make it harder for someone to be released on bond. In 2018, she joined with the lone Democrat on the court to dissent from a ruling upholding the forced closure of the last abortion clinic in Toledo. “Party affiliation should not – and people have to understand it should not – have anything to do with how a judge does their job.” “I broke away from the mould in some people’s minds,” she would later say of that decision.
A decade ago, she joined a dissent when the supreme court upheld the state legislative districts drawn by Republicans. Those decisions have prompted chatter among Republicans about impeaching O’Connor, 70, who will leave the court after nearly two decades at the end of this year because she has reached the mandatory retirement age for judges in Ohio. She also sided with Democrats to block an initial GOP proposal for congressional districts before going into effect in January. Since January, Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor has served as the decisive vote on three separate occasions blocking Ohio Republicans from enacting proposed state legislative maps.