Bernstein, Zahra win Michigan Supreme Court seats

Michigan Supreme Court incumbents Richard Bernstein and Brian Zahra won re-election to eight-year terms as the high court faces future litigation over the reach of abortion rights in the state.

With 99% of the votes counted, Democratic-nominated Bernstein received 33% of the votes and Republican-nominated Zahra had 24.7%.

State Rep. Kyra Harris Bolden, D-Southfield, trailed with 21%. Republican-nominated Miller Canfield attorney Paul Hudson received 14%, and Pentiuk, Couvreur & Kobiljak attorney Kerry Lee Morgan had 7%.

Supreme Court elections are nonpartisan, but each candidate was nominated by political parties. The bench will maintain its 4-3 majority for Democratic-nominated justices.

Bernstein and Bolden were nominated by Democrats; Hudson and Zahra by Republicans; and Morgan, a perennial candidate, was the Libertarian Party nominee.

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The Michigan Supreme Court is expected to eventually weigh in on abortion rights in Michigan. Two court orders are preventing enforcement of the 1931 state law that bans abortion except in cases where the mother's life is endangered in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, returning abortion policy to the states.

At the Michigan Democratic Party's August convention, Bernstein said the Michigan Supreme Court would have the final say on abortion rights in Michigan — be it through two pending lawsuits challenging Michigan’s current abortion law or through the interpretation of Proposal 3.

Bernstein was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court in 2014 and was the first blind justice on the court. He previously handled public service cases at his family's Farmington Hills law firm, The Sam Bernstein Law Firm.

He has been involved in litigation that gained accessibility for disabled fliers in Detroit, forced Detroit to fix broken wheelchair lifts on city buses, preserved special education funding and ended the American Bar Association's discriminatory practices toward blind students.

Zahra has been a Supreme Court justice since January 2011, when he was appointed by then-Gov. Rick Snyder. He also served on the Michigan Court of Appeals for 12 years and the Wayne County Circuit Court for four years. He is co-chair of the Justice For All Commission, which works to improve access to the civil justice system and provides attorneys to people who cannot afford an attorney in civil cases.

Harris Bolden is on her second term representing the Southfield area and the 35th District in the state House of Representatives. Before that, she was a defense attorney, a judicial law clerk in Wayne County Circuit Court and a civil attorney with Lewis & Munday, P.C.

If she had been elected, she would have been the first Black woman to sit on the state Supreme Court. But there is a possibility that Whitmer might appoint Harris Bolden.

Hudson leads the appeals group at the Detroit-based Miller Canfield law firm and has argued more than 150 cases in Michigan appeals courts. Hudson also has clerked for a federal appellate judge

Morgan is an attorney with Pentiuk, Couvreur & Kobiljak. He also was an attorney-adviser with the United States Commission on Civil Rights in Washington, D.C., and was the director of the U.S. Bicentennial Project for Regent University.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also will be nominating a replacement for Chief Justice Bridget McCormack, who announced her retirement in September. McCormack is expected to step down from the high court between Nov. 22 and Dec. 31. 

kberg@detroitnews.com