By PAUL KIEFER
ANNAPOLIS – Maryland lawmakers are weighing two bills this year that would shake up how the state chooses circuit court judges.
The proposals are at odds with one another. One bill aims to simply improve the existing contested election process for circuit court judges by opening primaries to all Maryland voters. The other would eliminate contested circuit court elections altogether – a shift that would require a constitutional amendment.
The proposals represent two sides of a decades-long debate in the Maryland General Assembly about the value of contested circuit court elections. Dozens of failed reform bills have been proposed in the past, but none have passed.
Some members of Maryland’s judiciary argue the state should do away with judicial elections entirely, saying that change would shield judges from the ethical and practical challenges involved in competitive political campaigns.
“The job of a judge is, or at least should be, inherently apolitical,” said Maryland Supreme Court Chief Justice Matthew J. Fader.
Others stand by Maryland’s approach to filling circuit court benches, arguing that contested elections are a valuable opportunity for voters to shape their judiciary. If the process is flawed, they say, the state should resolve those flaws rather than ending contested circuit court elections entirely.
Circuit court judges are currently the only Maryland court to run in contested elections. All other state courts fill their benches with judges appointed by the governor, giving voters a say in whether those judges hold their seats in retention elections every 10 years. But the judges run unopposed and, at least according to some of the state’s leading legal experts, no Maryland judge has been ousted in a retention election in living memory.
While the governor appoints judges to fill vacancies on circuit courts, the state constitution requires that those judges stand for reelection every 15 years – elections in which they, unlike any other Maryland judge, can face a challenger.
The conversation about the system’s merits has restarted among Maryland lawmakers, with Fader and other prominent Maryland legal figures backing a bill that would change circuit courts’ process for filling benches to match the rest of Maryland courts. The proposal arose from a work group formed by the Maryland Judicial Conference three years ago to review the issue. The work group released its final report – which argued that Maryland should move away from contested circuit court elections – last year.
“We believe that this is the best solution to maintain public trust and confidence in the court and in its ability to have judges who are fully qualified to take office in all cases,” Fader told members of the House Judiciary Committee in a preliminary hearing on the bill.
Proponents of the bill assert that contested elections for circuit court positions open the bench to candidates who are unqualified for the role.
“Our system allows individuals with little to no judicial experience to challenge sitting judges,” said Prince George’s County Circuit Court Judge Cheri Simpkins. That means some judges who were initially appointed to their seat “must run against opponents who only meet the minimum qualifications of being a licensed person residing in the county for five years and paying a nominal filing fee,” she added.
Maryland State Bar Association President Raphael Santini pointed to former Prince George’s County Circuit Court Judge April Ademiluyi, who won her seat in a contested election in 2020 and whose “egregious” violations of judicial ethics prompted the Maryland Supreme Court to remove her from the bench in 2024.
Appointed judges, Santini told Capital News Service, have passed through a rigorous vetting process run by a judicial nominating commission and more than a dozen committees within the state’s bar association. That vetting is done by fellow attorneys from a variety of legal fields who are well-equipped to review a candidate’s legal and personal record, he added.
Elizabeth Hewlett, an attorney in Prince George’s County and supporter of the proposal, said that voter participation in circuit court races is vastly lower than participation in better-publicized races, in large part because judges’ schedules and ethics code leave them poorly positioned to campaign.
Campaigning in competitive elections, said Kelly Hughes Iverson, co-chair of the Maryland State Bar Association’s laws committee, can place them in ethically compromising positions.
“When the courts are fundraising, the appearance of sitting judges accepting campaign donations from contributors, which includes attorneys and litigants who have cases before them, undermines the public trust in an independent judiciary, and may discourage candidates from applying for the bench at all,” Iverson said.
Attorneys are more engaged in judicial elections than the general public, Santini said, and more likely to contribute to a judge’s campaign.
Backers also argue that judges, who routinely receive threats from those impacted by their decisions, put their safety at risk when campaigning for reelection.
But not all members of the judiciary are on board with the proposed changes.
“All it does is remove any opportunity for anyone to challenge the person that is named by the governor,” said Carroll County Circuit Court Judge Maria Oesterreicher, who won her seat in a 2018 contested election and served on the judicial workgroup that put forward the bill.
Critics like Oesterreicher argue that while circuit court elections are imperfect, they are also a rare opportunity for voters to play a larger role in shaping Maryland’s judiciary.
If lawmakers are concerned about the qualifications of judicial candidates, she argued, they could require candidates to go through the same vetting process as applicants for appointed seats.
“That’s an easy solution, but we’ve jumped right to the extreme,” Oesterreicher said. “I think taking the rights out of the voters’ hands is not the right way to fix the problem of judges campaigning if that’s the problem that people want to fix.”
Skeptics asserted that the appointment process is far from perfect, in large part because it relies on a relatively small group of attorneys to review and recommend candidates. Those attorneys, critics argue, may choose favorites based on politics or personal relationships rather than qualifications.
“It is clubby,” said Claudia Barber, who ran unsuccessfully for an Anne Arundel Circuit Court seat last year. “It is also political … which is why, oftentimes, the best is not always chosen.”
“I ran against someone who was the third member of the same law firm to be on the bench that only has four seats,” Oesterreicher said of her 2018 campaign. The appointment process can favor well-connected attorneys over those with equal or greater qualifications, she argued.
Del. Robin Grammer Jr., a Republican representing Baltimore County, offered harsher criticisms. He argued that the proposal to end contested circuit court elections would primarily benefit the judges, not the public.
“Elections are hard,” he told CNS. “You don’t get to exempt yourself out of the system and have, frankly, what ends up being a lifetime appointment just because you think it’s hard … When is the last time a judge has lost a retention election, like, ever?”
Grammer also contended that judges could avoid ethical concerns about campaign contributions from attorneys by finding alternative fundraising options.
A version of the bill before the Maryland Senate this month makes some concessions to skeptics. It would still allow contested elections in narrow circumstances, and it would require candidates in those elections to pass a review of their qualifications for office.
Lawmakers reluctant to eliminate contested circuit court elections have another option this year: expanding voters’ input in circuit court primaries.
Del. Chao Wu, a Democrat representing Howard and Montgomery County, is the sponsor of a bill that would replace Maryland’s closed partisan primaries for circuit court elections with open, nonpartisan primaries. Closed primaries leave unaffiliated voters – who make up nearly a quarter of the state’s electorate – without a voice in key local races, Wu said.
“I think a lot of unaffiliated voters feel they’re really disenfranchised,” Wu told CNS. “They’re not able to vote in [primaries for] one of the most important positions in the state.”
Wu’s bill received no pushback from members of the House Judiciary Committee, but lawmakers have yet to act on either bill.
If the proposal to end contested circuit court elections passes this session, the question will appear on Maryland voters’ ballots in November 2026.
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