The Supreme Court has refused to reinstate a Pennsylvania judge suspended for partisan Facebook posts praising Democrats, leaving his career and pension losses intact.
The justices on Monday turned away former Judge Mark Cohen’s challenge to a 2024 suspension by Pennsylvania’s Judicial Conduct Board, The Hill reported.
Cohen did not only lose the bench. Court filings show he also lost his pensions after the board moved on dozens of Facebook posts that praised Democrats, including former President Biden and Gov. Josh Shapiro, and pushed policies such as raising the minimum wage.
The board called the posts “partisan cheerleading.” Lower courts upheld the discipline. The U.S. Supreme Court left that result alone.
Cohen was no stranger to partisan life. He served more than four decades in the Pennsylvania Legislature before the judgeship. He ran for the seat as a Democrat.
Once on the bench, he kept posting. The Judicial Conduct Board said the volume and tone crossed the line that separates a judge from a campaign surrogate.
Cohen cast the posts as speech on matters of public concern. He argued judges are public officials speaking to constituents, not ordinary government employees. His lawyers said the lower courts applied a First Amendment standard that was too weak to protect judicial speech.
Pennsylvania’s high court disagreed with that framing. It applied the familiar balancing test used when a government worker claims employer discipline violated free speech rights. The suspension stood.
Cohen’s attorneys pressed the Supreme Court hard. They said the case raised a clean constitutional question about what judges may say.
His lawyers at DLA Piper wrote:
“This Court should grant the petition because it cleanly presents a question of importance concerning fundamental First Amendment protections for members of the judiciary.”
In the petition, his attorneys went further:
“This Court’s guidance is sorely needed. If allowed to stand, the Cohen decision will have a chilling effect on judicial speech, invite political interference in the judicial branch, undermine the rule of law, and have the perverse effect of impugning the integrity of the judiciary.”
Pennsylvania’s Judicial Conduct Board, represented by Stanford Law School’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, rejected that alarm. The board said there is no precedent that lets judges engage in this kind of posting under the First Amendment. It told the justices the state courts had done nothing novel.
In court filings, the board’s side wrote:
“There is no reason for this Court to review that straightforward application of familiar rules that judges around the country have followed for decades.”
The Supreme Court agreed enough to walk away. No argument. No opinion restoring Cohen. The suspension and the pension loss remain.
Judges swear to apply the law without fear or favor. Open partisan cheerleading on social media undercuts that promise in public view. Voters already struggle to trust courts that look like extensions of party machines.
Cohen wanted the highest court in the country to treat his Democratic praise posts as protected constituent outreach. Pennsylvania’s discipline system treated them as conduct unfit for the bench. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to second-guess that judgment.
That outcome will not please every free-speech absolutist. It will please anyone who still expects a judge to sound like a judge rather than a precinct captain with a better title.
A black robe is not a campaign hat. When a judge forgets that, the public is entitled to a system that remembers.
