Georgia Supreme Court upholds ruling on canceled election to high court bench

The Georgia Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling Thursday, May 14, denying a bid by two wouldbe candidates for a seat on the high court from landing a spot on the June 9 primary ballot.

Former U.S. Rep. John Barrow and former state Rep. Beth Beskin filed separate lawsuits in March after Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, at the request of Gov. Brian Kemp, canceled an election to choose a successor to departing Justice Keith Blackwell.

Blackwell’s six-year term

ATLANTA —

was due to expire at the end of this year. But he notified Kemp in February that he planned instead to resign effective Nov. 18.

Kemp then instructed Raffensperger to cancel the election and that the governor would be filling the seat by appointment.

The high court agreed, declaring in a 6-2 decision Thursday, May 14, that under Georgia’s 1983 Constitution, a justice’s resignation – once accepted by the governor – is irrevocable.

“When an incumbent justice vacates his office before the end of his term, his existing term of office is eliminated, and the successor justice appointed by the governor serves a new, shortened term that is unrelated to the previous incumbent’s term,” Presiding Justice David Nahmias wrote in a 71-page majority opinion.

The Constitution goes on to provide that an appointee to an elective judicial office shall serve “until Jan. 1 of the year following the next general election which is more than six months after such person’s appointment.”

In this case, that means Blackwell’s successor will serve a term that begins Nov. 18 and runs through Jan. 1, 2023.

To continue in office, he or she would have to seek reelection in 2022.

Two of the judges who stepped up to the Supreme Court to hear the case after three sitting justices recused themselves dissented from the ruling.

“We must reconcile two constitutional provisions,” Judge Brenda Holbert Trammell wrote in a 25-page dissent. “One guarantees the rights of the voters to determine the next justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. The other grants to the governor the right to fill vacancies in such office by appointment.