Studying OCPAC's Rationale For Judge Retention Decision

  OCPAC just published their October newsletter which included their position on several general election issues. While we agree with their conclusion on the 2 supreme court justices, we have an entirely different path to getting there. In fact, we have serious concerns with their rationale and find their thought process, while pragmatic; abandons certain conservative principles. There are plenty of reasons for opposing these 2 justices, but OCPAC never posted the reasons SoonerPolitics Editorial Review Board came up with.  Instead, they condemned the 2 justices for:

• not upholding unfunded mandates on businesses, 
• using strict constructionist interpretations of the state constitution, 
• not letting foreign courts determine Oklahoma law

  It matters how the court rules, but it also matters what reasoning they apply in their opinions. Often the language we applaud in one ruling, sets the stage for a far more devastating defeat when they use that same standard at a later date.
​  To be sure; the high court has lost the respect of most all of the state's conservatives. They have become inconsistent in their positions. Let's make sure we are not inconsistent in our principles and positions.

Here is the portion of the OCPAC publication where their rationale for rejecting judges is posted...

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​3.  Judging Justices.  Oklahoma Supreme Court Justices James Winchester and Donald Combs will be on the ballot.  Vote NO on both!  In the last few years, the Oklahoma Supreme Court has:

• Banned the Ten Commandments.  Prescott v. Okla. Capitol Preservation Committee, 2015 OK 54.  The U.S. Supreme Court has the Ten Commandments on its building.  Previous state Supreme Courts have upheld Christian symbols like a Cross on public ground.
• Protected child rapists.  Burns v. Cline, 2016 OK 99.  The court struck down a law requiring tissue samples from minors getting abortions.  This law would have helped attorneys prosecute rapists.  Other state agencies have this authority, but the court targeted this pro-life law unjustly.
• Denied women ultrasounds.  Nova Health Systems v. Pruitt.  292 P.3d 28, 2012.  Seeing an ultrasound makes a mom 80% less likely to choose abortion.  Babies die every day as a result of this opinion.
• Protected abortionists.  Burns v. Cline, 2014 OK 90.  This decision overturned the law requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges at a local hospital.
• Protected sex offenders.  Hendricks v. Jones ex rel. State ex rel. Okla. Dept of Corr., 2013 OK 71.  The court overturned a law that deterred sex offenders from moving to Oklahoma.

Download this Judging Judges Flyer and give a copy to everybody at church.  Ask them to vote NO on Oklahoma Supreme Court Justices James Winchester and Donald Combs.

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  While we respect  the effort of OCPAC and admire the legacy of their advocacy, we are leery of anything that looks like inconsistency in principle. 

• The court has been properly criticized for ignoring the plain language of the constitution when it opposes their preferred outcomes. But the Oklahoma Constitution has a horrible section which limits religious expression even further than the US Constitution. It's known as the "Blaine Amendment" language. That section needs to be removed, and SQ790 does just that. Past courts have ignored the Blaine language but this time the court did not. The original state constitutional convention should never have adopted this and the legislature should have acted many decades ago, to repeal it. this year we are fixing the problem as voters.
• Individuals and businesses have decried the legislatures for passing unfunded mandates on business. Yet we see a great willingness to do so when we conservatives hate that business. When we do pass unfunded mandates, we give political cover to liberals who would do the same. We lose the moral high ground. If there is a case of equalizing regulation or providing constitutional public safety oversight, then we justify it on constitutional grounds rather than punitive efforts to run a disfavored business out of the state.
• When other states convict a hiker with felony exposure for urinating in the woods, they often go on that state's sex offender list. But the Oklahoma code might not consider the particular facts of the case to warrant a felony or a permanent place on an interstate list. Thus, our 10th amendment "state's rights" require us to not use another state's laws to determine who our "deplorables" are.  If the high court is making this point in their ruling, we conservatives must concur.
• There is a body of thought regarding 4th amendment privacy which says the state must have probable cause before gathering bodily evidence from an individual. If this is the reasoning of the high court in preventing tissue samples from minors, we conservatives must concur.

  Sooner Politics recommends a no vote on Winchester and Combs. But we published a separate set of arguments for our position. You can read that article here.