Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome. It's time now for our community connection right here on k the one you trust, David Bond is joining us again.
How you doing, Dave? Great?
Tom, thanks for having me back. Well, it's always great to have you back. You know, we learned so much from you and your organization. The last time you were here, many people would go into the voting booth and they saw that, Oh my gosh, retention of judges. What's that mean? Oh well, what the heck? You know, if I haven't heard of them, they haven't created a train wreck whatever. Sometimes they vote to retain. Sometimes they just don't vote
at all. But you and your group and your organization have really taken a good analysis of the records of all these justices here in Oklahoma Supreme Court justices tell us a little bit about all this.
This is good stuff. Thank you so much. Tom.
Yeah, on behalf of OCPA Action and also OCPA we have put together the Oklahoma Judicial Scorecard. A lot of folks don't think about their Oklahoma Supreme Court very much, and so we've been going all over the state educating folks about their state Supreme Court, helping them be more familiar with the justices on the court how they have ruled on important cases, particularly over the past twenty years. And so we've put out there the Oklahoma Judicial Scorecard.
It's at oaklad judges dot com, Okla judges dot comoklad Judges dot com. It's the first of its kind that we know of publicly available overview of how our Supreme Court justices have ruled on cases. It covers a lot of areas, It covers a lot of stuff related to our state's legal climate.
We've been labeled here in Oklahoma as a quote.
Judicial hellhole by out of state groups the American Tort Reform Association, because we every time our Republican legislators at the state capital try to pass meaningful lawsuit reform, Supreme.
Court justices throw it out.
That's just one example they've They're trending leftward on a lot of other things as well. But three of them are up for retention on the ballot on November fifth, Yvonne kugar No mc gurrich, and James Edmondson. All three were appointed by Democrat governors. A lot of people are surprised to learn that we have nearly half the justices on our State Supreme Court who were appointed by Democrats and who have a very liberal bent and a tendency
to legislate from the bench. One of them, Yvonne Coagar, has been on the court longer than Nancy Pelosi has been in Congress, and they both have a very liberal worldview, and the other two are quite liberal as well. And so we are encouraging Oklahomas when they go in to vote to really think about who am I voting on?
Is this the direction I want our state to go?
Would I rather see a change and have something more in line with where a majority of Oklahomas are on the court. And so the way retention election works is if you vote yes, they are retained in office. They get to stay in office. And if you vote no, then they are removed and somebody else will be nominated to take their place and we can make a change.
Wow, you guys have really done your homework.
You've actually scored all the justices, but these three in particular.
Yes, they're nine justices on our state Supreme Court. We have a ranking from up to one hundred percent score all three of these Gurrich, Kauger and Edmondson have scored pretty low it's meant to be a scorecard that lines up with conservative judicial principles. So folks on the other side of the spectrum may see these scores and say, well, I want to vote to retain them. I think they're great.
I think we need liberals on our Supreme Court. I'm glad we still have justices who are appointed by Democrats.
That's a good thing.
But other folks may say, you know, I don't know if that is a good thing. I think I may need to vote, know and remove these folks. It's not just been on tort reform stuff that they've been throwing out conservative reforms. They've been throwing out a lot of stuff. They've thrown out portions of our states election security laws. Back during COVID, you know, a lot of states were getting rid of a lot of security measures to verify mail in absentee ballots. A lot that was going on
all over the country. During twenty twenty, our State Supreme Court actually did the same thing. They threw out some protections on our security verifications for mail in ballots here. The legislature later thankfully came back and shored that back up, but our Supreme Court was doing the same thing that folks in Pennsylvania and Arizona were doing to water down
the validity of mail in ballots in those states. They've thrown out pieces of our state's immigration law, particularly pieces that have pertained to illegal aliens who come in our state and commit felonies, making it harder for law enforcement to deal with that.
So they've thrown out a bunch of things.
They threw the Ten Commandments monument off the state capitol grounds a few years ago, when the ACLU and other people said, we can't have that Ten Commandments at our state capital. We have separation of church and state. Never mind that the Ten Commandments are at the US Supreme.
Court and our laws are based on those.
Many of them are yes, So our our state Supreme Court sided with the ACLU and also the Church of Satan believe it or not, the actual Church of Satan, and said, yeah, we can't have the Ten Commandments at the state capitol. Those are just a few examples. We've got many many more at the judicial scorecard at OKLA judges dot com ok La judges dot com.
Now I've heard that a few of these justices have been accused of actually trying to reword or rewrite legislation.
Yes, they do have.
They are liberal activist judges in the in the modern sense of the term. They legislate from the bench on a regular basis. You know, we have Republican majorities at the state Capitol, we have a Republican in the governor's office, and they pass legislation that's that goes a certain direction
on a whole host of issues. And our state Supreme Court has developed a pretty consistent habit of throwing a lot of that stuff out and in fact legislating from the bench, not always even giving written opinions as to why they're throwing something out, sometimes just doing it, and.
Often speaks of authoritarianism right there, when you don't have a rationale for your decision, just do as I say.
That doesn't sim well with a lot of people.
It is interesting the way we do Supreme court judges here in Oklahoma. They're not really there's not a checks and balance process with the legislative branch like you have in the US Constitution. And so we have developed over time a situation where our state Supreme Court doesn't usually feel like they have to answer to a lot of folks. They run in retention elections every six years after they're initially put on the court. Nobody's ever been unretained by
the voters in Oklahoma. This would be the first time. But I do think it's a pretty severe situation. We've got three folks who were appointed by Democrats, have a clearly left leaning view of how government ought to be, and have consistently legislated from the bench in the liberal direction, siding with trial lawyers but also with the ACLU and other folks.
How liberal are the justices ranked in the United States? I mean, where's Oklahoma coming in as far as having liberal justices?
Thank you for that question.
So group of researchers from Alabama and Georgia did a big, extensive study of all the state supreme courts in the entire country over the last four decades, and they found that Oklahoma Supreme Court was the fourth most liberal in the country, more liberal than New York, California, Vermont, Illinois, New Jersey, you name it. Only Hawaii and three other states had more consistently liberal leaning supreme courts than Oklahoma.
And I think some folks would be a little bit shocked hearing this for the first time.
A lot of people are surprised.
A lot of people assume, well, we have Republicans in the legislature and a Republican governor. Surely we have a right leaning state Supreme Court that really is not true, has really never been true in Oklahoma. This would be a big sea change. You have three of the most
liberal folks on the court. If they were to be removed by the voters, if a majority of voters vote no on the three of them on November fifth, they would be removed, and then there would be the possibility of a true flip in the court to a right leaning court, which would probably be more in line with where a significant majority of Oklahomans are.
All right, people want to find out where do we go to get this scorecard?
Again?
You said that at the beginning, and I know some folks just tuned it in the middle.
Thank you find that, Thank you so much, Tom.
Okla Judges dot com, oklad judges dot com. Ok La judges dot com is where folks can find the Oklahoma judicial scorecard.
And where can we find out more about your organization?
Thank you so much. Ocpak dot org. If you go to the scorecard, it'll take you to our website as well. Thank you, oklad judges dot com. We really hope folks will see that as a resource, just so they have something to go off of when they're going in to vote on these Supreme Court justices. We typically know how we're going to vote on a congressional race or presidential because we've had a lot of information thrown at us
and we can sift through it. But most voters, I've certainly never had a place where I could go and say, who are my Supreme Court justices?
Are they liberal? Conservative? What are they?
And something that I can go off of when I go in to vote. And so that's what we've tried to all Right, Hey, David, thank you for being with us today. Thank you Tom for the opportunity.
All Right, folks, you have been watching and listening to our community connection