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Christine Donohue

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Christine Donohue
Image of Christine Donohue

Democratic Party

Candidate, Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Pennsylvania Supreme Court
Tenure

2016 - Present

Term ends

2026

Years in position

9

Compensation

Base salary

$253,361

Elections and appointments
Next election

November 4, 2025

Education

Bachelor's

East Stroudsburg University, 1974

Law

Duquesne University School of Law, 1980

Contact

Official website

Campaign website

Campaign Facebook

Campaign Twitter

Campaign Instagram

Campaign YouTube

Christine Donohue (Democratic Party) is a judge of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. She assumed office on January 8, 2016. Her current term ends on January 4, 2026.

Donohue (Democratic Party) is running for re-election for judge of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. She is on the ballot in the retention election on November 4, 2025.[source]

Donohue first became a member of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court through a partisan election. She was first elected to the court in 2015. To read more about judicial elections in Pennsylvania, click here.

In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship, a study examining the partisan affiliation of all state supreme court justices in the country. As part of this study, we assigned each justice a Confidence Score describing our confidence in the degree of partisanship exhibited by the justices' past partisan behavior, before they joined the court.[1] Donohue received a confidence score of Strong Democrat.[2] Click here to read more about this study.

Biography

Christine Donohue received a B.A. in political science from East Stroudsburg University in 1974 and a J.D. from Duquesne University School of Law in 1980.[3] Prior to her service on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, she was a judge on the Pennsylvania Superior Court from 2008 to 2015. From 1989 to 2007, she was a shareholder with Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, P.C. and worked as a private practice attorney from 1980 to 1989.[3]

2025 battleground election

See also: Pennsylvania Supreme Court elections, 2025

Ballotpedia identified the November 4 general election as a battleground race. The summary below is from our coverage of this election here

Three Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices — Christine Donohue (D), Kevin M. Dougherty (D), and David N. Wecht (D) — are up for retention elections on November 4, 2025.

WHYY's Carmen Russell-Sluchansky wrote, "State judicial elections typically garner little attention, but Pennsylvania’s 2025 state Supreme Court races are shaping up to be the next major political battleground."[4]

The state court has a 5-2 Democratic majority.[5] The court has been Democratic-controlled since 2015, when Donohue, Dougherty, and Wecht won election to their seats.[6] If voters do not retain a justice, Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) with approval from two-thirds of the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania Senate, can appoint a temporary replacement until 2027, when an election would be held for a permanent replacement.[7][8][9] Additionally, if all three justices are not retained and the Senate does not approve Shapiro's nominees, the court would be split with two liberals and two conservatives, which The Philadelphia Inquirer's Gillian McGoldrick wrote could leave the court "unlikely to reach majority decisions and could weaken the voice of Pennsylvania’s top court going into the 2028 presidential election, when the swing state could decide the next president yet again."[10]

Pennsylvania uses partisan elections to select a justice for an initial 10-year term, and uses a retention election to determine whether to keep them. If a justice is retained, they will serve another 10-year term. Pennsylvania is one of eight states to use partisan elections for the initial selection of a justice and one of 22 to use retention elections for the renewal of a term.

According to Pennsylvania's Code of Judicial Conduct, justices are limited in their ability to campaign.[8] Both the Democratic and Republican parties have said they would be involved in this race. The Republican State Leadership Committee has run ads on social media, asking voters to vote against retaining the justices, which said, "In 2024, we voted by mail and flipped Pennsylvania red. This year, radical liberal judges are trying to secure another decade of power. We need you to stop them, show up again, vote 'no' in November."[11] As of August 2025, there was no reporting on Democratic efforts. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee said in February 2025 that they intended to invest in the state, writing in a statement, "We must preserve fair majorities to ensure state legislative races are run on fair maps and to protect the future of abortion access, voting rights, workers' rights, and so much more."[12]

Since retention elections were established in 1968, only one Pennsylvania justice, Russell Nigro (D) in 2005, has not been retained.[13] Since 2020, in 102 elections, 100 justices (98%) have won retention. The most recent justice in the U.S. to not win retention was Yvonne Kauger in Oklahoma in 2024.

Elections

2025

See also:  Pennsylvania Supreme Court elections, 2025

Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Seat 2 - Christine Donohue

Christine Donohue is running for retention to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on November 4, 2025.

Retention
 Vote
%
Votes
Yes
No
Total Votes


Endorsements

Ballotpedia is gathering information about candidate endorsements. To send us an endorsement, click here.

2015

See also: Pennsylvania judicial elections, 2015

Pennsylvania's judicial elections included a primary on May 19, 2015, and a general election on November 3, 2015. The filing deadline for candidates was March 11, 2015.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Three seats, General Election, 2015
Party Candidate Vote % Votes
     Democratic Green check mark transparent.png Kevin M. Dougherty 18.5% 1,079,835
     Democratic Green check mark transparent.png David N. Wecht 18.4% 1,070,568
     Democratic Green check mark transparent.png Christine Donohue 18.2% 1,059,167
     Republican Judith Olson 15.2% 887,409
     Republican Michael A. George 13.6% 796,124
     Republican Anne Covey 13.6% 795,330
     Independent Judicial Alliance Paul P. Panepinto 2.5% 144,403
Write-in votes 0% 0
Total Votes 5,832,836
Source: Pennsylvania Department of State, "Unofficial General Election Results," November 3, 2015


Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Three seats, Democratic Primary, 2015
Candidate Vote % Votes
Green check mark transparent.png David N. Wecht 22.1% 256,761
Green check mark transparent.png Kevin M. Dougherty 22.0% 256,048
Green check mark transparent.png Christine Donohue 21.4% 248,325
Anne Lazarus 16.3% 189,127
Dwayne D. Woodruff 11.7% 136,127
John H. Foradora 6.6% 76,190
Write-in votes 0% 0
Total Votes 1,162,578
Source: Pennsylvania Department of State, "2015 Municipal Primary Unofficial Results," May 19, 2015

Recommendation

Donohue was highly recommended by the Pennsylvania Bar Association due in part to her "proven record of judicial leadership and ethics and dedication to the legal profession."[14]

Endorsements

  • Pennsylvania AFL-CIO
  • Pennsylvania Building and Construction Trades Council
  • Teamsters Joint Council 40
  • Allegheny- Fayette Central Labor Council
  • Pittsburgh Regional Building Trades Council
  • Westmoreland County Central Labor Council
  • Western Pennsylvania Carpenters Regional District Council
  • International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union No. 5 (IBEW Local 5)
  • Steamfitters Local Union 449
  • Pittsburgh Plumbers Local 27
  • International Union of Painters and Allied Trades I.U.P.A.T. District Council 57
  • International Union of Operation Engineers I.U.O.E. Local 66
  • United Food and Commercial Workers Local 23
  • United Mine Workers District 2
  • International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union No. 29 (IBEW Local 29)
  • Pennsylvania Federation of Teachers
  • Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers
  • SEIU Pennsylvania State Council
  • Pennsylvania Pipe Trades
  • Unite Here Local 57
  • Luzerne County Democratic Party
  • Schuylkill County Democratic Party
  • Gertrude Stein Club of Greater Pittsburgh
  • Steel City Stonewall Democrats
  • Pittsburgh's 14th Ward Independent Democratic Club[15]

Campaign themes

2025

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Candidate Connection

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Twitter
Email

2015

Donohue's campaign website listed the following themes for the 2015 election:

“

Throughout her career, Judge Donohue has had the opportunity to litigate or preside over landmark cases protecting the rights of injured persons, holding corporations accountable for fraudulent behavior, eliminating bias against LGBT parents in custody matters and more. She has been an adjunct professor at Duquesne University and lectured before legal, professional and student audiences. She has served on or led every ethics enforcement body and tribunal established in Pennsylvania to ensure attorneys and judges comply with the highest standards of conduct. Judge Donohue, who represented individuals, corporations and business people throughout her career as an attorney, earned the title of Pennsylvania Super Lawyer and is listed in Best Lawyers in America. [23]

”
—Donohue for Justice (2015)[24]


Campaign finance summary

Campaign finance information for this candidate is not yet available from OpenSecrets. That information will be published here once it is available.

Analysis

Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship (2020)

See also: Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship and Ballotpedia Courts: Determiners and Dissenters

Last updated: June 15, 2020

In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship, a study examining the partisan affiliation of all state supreme court justices in the country as of June 15, 2020.

The study presented Confidence Scores that represented our confidence in each justice's degree of partisan affiliation. This was not a measure of where a justice fell on an ideological spectrum, but rather a measure of how much confidence we had that a justice was or had been affiliated with a political party. The scores were based on seven factors, including but not limited to party registration.[25]

The five resulting categories of Confidence Scores were:

  • Strong Democrat
  • Mild Democrat
  • Indeterminate[26]
  • Mild Republican
  • Strong Republican

This justice's Confidence Score, as well as the factors contributing to that score, is presented below. The information below was current as of June 2020.

Christine
Donohue

Pennsylvania

  • Partisan Confidence Score:
    Strong Democrat
  • Judicial Selection Method:
    Elected
  • Key Factors:
    • Was a registered Democrat as of 2020
    • Donated over $2,000 to Democratic candidates
    • Received donations from Democrat-affiliated individuals or organizations


Partisan Profile

Details:

Donohue ran as a registered Democrat for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. She donated $9,325 to Democratic candidates. She received $161,232 from the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. She was endorsed by the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, the Pennsylvania Building and Construction Trades Council, the Teamsters Joint Council 40, the Allegheny- Fayette Central Labor Council, and the Pittsburgh Regional Building Trades Council, all of which endorse Democrats more frequently than Republicans.



Noteworthy cases

Wolf v. Scarnati (2020)

See also: Lawsuits about state actions and policies in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, 2020-2021

Wolf v. Scarnati: On July 1, 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled against legislative Republicans in favor of Gov. Tom Wolf (D), upholding his ability to maintain COVID-19 shutdown orders. The lawsuit stemmed from Wolf’s March 6, 2020, emergency disaster proclamation, which he renewed on June 3, 2020. On June 9, 2020, the Pennsylvania General Assembly adopted a concurrent resolution, HR836, seeking to terminate the disaster emergency, which was not presented to the governor for approval or veto. The governor did not comply. Three Republican state senators filed a complaint in the Commonwealth Court, asking the court to command Wolf to comply with their resolution by "issuing an executive order or proclamation ending the state of disaster emergency." Wolf asked the state supreme court to exercise extraordinary jurisdiction, thus removing the case to the high court. The state supreme court held that HR836 was a legal nullity because the Pennsylvania Constitution required that concurrent resolutions relating to emergency declarations be presented to the governor for approval or veto. As the General Assembly did not do so, the court refused to order Wolf to end the shutdown, stating, "The Pennsylvania Constitution does not empower the legislature to act unilaterally to suspend a law, and the Governor’s purported suspension of law did not violate the non-delegation doctrine." Justice David N. Wecht wrote the court's opinion, which Justices Max Baer, Debra Todd, and Christine Donohue joined. Justice Kevin M. Dougherty filed a separate opinion, concurring and dissenting in part.[27]

No retroactive increase in sex offender registration periods

In Commonwealth v. Muniz, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that Pennsylvania’s Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) could not apply retroactively to a defendant who was found guilty of a sex crime before the legislation took effect.[28] The court ruled that SORNA’s registration requirements constituted a criminal punishment and that the ex post facto clauses of the U.S. and Pennsylvania Constitutions prevented the state from punishing defendants beyond what the law allowed at the time of his or her crime. Justice Donohue joined the majority opinion.

State supreme court judicial selection in Pennsylvania

See also: Judicial selection in Pennsylvania

The seven justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court are selected in partisan elections.[29]

Justices serve 10-year terms, after which they must run in yes-no retention elections if they wish to remain on the court. A separate part of the ballot is designated for these elections, and justices' names appear without respect to party affiliation.[29][30] To learn more about these elections, visit the Pennsylvania judicial elections page.

Qualifications

To serve on the supreme court, a justice must:

  • have state residence for at least one year;
  • be a member of the state bar; and
  • be under the age of 75.[29][31]

Chief justice

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court chooses its chief justice by seniority; the title is held by the longest-serving justice on the court.[29][32]

Vacancies

See also: How vacancies are filled in state supreme courts

In the event of a midterm vacancy, the governor appoints a successor who must be approved by a two-thirds vote of the Pennsylvania Senate. Interim justices stand for election at the next municipal election occurring more than 10 months after the vacancy occurred.[29]

By tradition, appointed interim judges of the supreme court, superior court, or court of appeals do not go on to run for permanent seats. In other words, the governor appoints these judges with the expectation that the judge will only fill the interim vacancy.[29]

The map below highlights how vacancies are filled in state supreme courts across the country.



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External links

Candidate

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    Footnotes

    1. ↑ We calculated confidence scores by collecting several data points such as party registration, donations, and previous political campaigns.
    2. ↑ The five possible confidence scores were: Strong Democrat, Mild Democrat, Indeterminate, Mild Republican, and Strong Republican.
    3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named bio
    4. ↑ Penn Capital Star, "With three seats on the ballot, this year’s state Supreme Court race may be ‘a different animal’," March 3, 2025
    5. ↑ Politico, "Democrats expand majority on PA Supreme Court," November 7, 2023
    6. ↑ WESA, "Voters Give Dems Control Of Pennsylvania Supreme Court," November 3, 2015
    7. ↑ Spotlight PA, "Republicans have a chance to transform the Pa. Supreme Court this year," February 21, 2025
    8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Spotlight PA, "Pa. primary election 2025: The Commonwealth and Superior Court candidates advancing to November," May 20, 2025
    9. ↑ PoliticsPA, "Who’s Running For Statewide Court?" March 12, 2025
    10. ↑ The Philadelphia Inquirer, "Republicans are attempting to boot three Democratic justices from the Pa. Supreme Court — and for the first time, Dems are worried," May 11, 2025
    11. ↑ The Keystone, "Billionaire-backed group trying to flip control of PA Supreme Court," August 14, 2025
    12. ↑ Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, "RELEASE: DLCC Adds Majority-Deciding Wisconsin and Pennsylvania State Supreme Court Races to Target Map," February 25, 2025
    13. ↑ PoliticsPA, "DLCC Adds PA State Supreme Court Race to Target Map," accessed August 14, 2025
    14. ↑ Pennsylvania Bar Association, "Judicial Evaluation Commission Releases 2015 Judicial Ratings," accessed July 7, 2021
    15. ↑ Judge Christine Donohue for Supreme Court Justice, "Endorsements and Recommendations," accessed July 7, 2021
    16. ↑ TribLive.com, "Much at stake as 16 vie for historic 3 vacancies on Pa. Supreme Court," January 11, 2015
    17. ↑ Pennsylvania Department of State, "Campaign Finance Online Reporting," accessed May 18, 2015
    18. ↑ TribLive, "3 candidates for Pennsylvania Supreme Court have more than $500k on hand for primary election," April 7, 2015
    19. ↑ Pennsylvania Department of State, "Campaign Finance Online Reporting," accessed April 22, 2015
    20. ↑ Philly.com, "5 running for Pa.'s top court agree: Judicial races cost too much," April 8, 2015
    21. ↑ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Senate GOP may not fill 2 vacancies on Pennsylvania’s high court," February 24, 2015
    22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Philly.com, "Two Supreme Court nominees under fire," February 22, 2015
    23. ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
    24. ↑ Donohue for Justice, "Bio," accessed April 26, 2015
    25. ↑ The seven factors were party registration, donations made to partisan candidates, donations made to political parties, donations received from political parties or bodies with clear political affiliation, participation in political campaigns, the partisanship of the body responsible for appointing the justice, and state trifecta status when the justice joined the court.
    26. ↑ An Indeterminate score indicates that there is either not enough information about the justice’s partisan affiliations or that our research found conflicting partisan affiliations.
    27. ↑ Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, "Wolf v. Scarnati: Opinion," July 1, 2020
    28. ↑ Pennsylvania Supreme Court, "Commonwealth v. Muniz," July 19, 2017
    29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 29.2 29.3 29.4 29.5 American Judicature Society, "Methods of Judicial Selection: Pennsylvania," archived October 3, 2014
    30. ↑ The Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania, "In Re: Nomination Papers of Marakay Rogers, Christina Valente and Carl J. Romanelli," November 7, 2006
    31. ↑ 2018 Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, "Title 42, Chapter 33, Section 3351," accessed August 25, 2020
    32. ↑ The Pennsylvania Code, "Chapter 7. Assignment of Judges," accessed September 3, 2014
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