In the heated news coverage of what’s at stake in the 2026 midterms, state supreme court races are drawing relatively little attention. Yet these are highly significant elections.

Thirty-one states are holding supreme court elections in 2026, with voters nationwide picking judges to fill more than 60 open seats.

As a law professor whose research and writing focuses on reproductive health, I’m watching these races closely. That’s because in the coming years these courts will have the final word on many consequential legal fights around abortion and trans healthcare.

State supreme court judges make high-stakes decisions

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending a half-century of federal constitutional protection for abortion, it handed this major issue back to the states. As a result, in addition to prompting ballot initiatives, the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has also spurred litigation in state courts.

These cases ask judges to discern, for example, whether state constitutions create a right to abortion – or, at least, prohibit restrictions on abortion access.

Moreover, in weighing the legality of abortion bans, state judges must determine specific issues of abortion access. Idaho’s high court recently approved Republican officials’ rewritten wording for a ballot initiative that would repeal the state’s abortion ban; advocates for the initiative argue that the language misrepresents Idaho’s abortion law.

In Indiana, the state Supreme Court recently heard arguments over whether a religious freedom law creates an exception to the state’s near-total abortion ban. The plaintiffs in that case argued that their faiths allowed or required the procedure in circumstances the ban........

© The Conversation