Effort to fill open seats on bench fails
HARRISBURG — Efforts to fill two vacant seats on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court hit a standstill Monday after one of Gov. Tom Wolf’s nominees, under fire for forwarding a racially insensitive e-mail, withdrew from consideration.
The withdrawal of Centre County President Judge Thomas Kistler, a Republican, also raised the politically thorny question of whether the Republican-controlled Senate would confirm a second nominee, a Democrat, and lose a GOP majority on the Supreme Court.
The Senate had hoped to fill the two vacant seats before the seven-seat Supreme Court next holds an oral argument session on March 9.
The December 2013 e-mail showed an image of a waving black couple separated by glass, the man wearing an orange jumpsuit and talking through a jailhouse phone under the heading, “Merry Christmas from the Johnsons.”
Rather, Kistler said he withdrew only because developments in his county’s court system have raised urgent matters that require his full attention.
Wolf’s administration said it had been told by the Senate’s Republican majority that Wolf’s other nominee, Duquesne University School of Law Dean Ken Gormley, a Democrat, would not be confirmed.
Voters in the November election will select three new justices to 10-year terms.
