The Supreme Court refused Monday to restore a former Pennsylvania judge who lost his bench and pensions after dozens of partisan Facebook posts praising Democrats and progressive policies.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away a challenge from former Pennsylvania Judge Mark Cohen, who had been suspended in 2024 for a string of partisan Facebook posts. Lower courts had already upheld the discipline, and the high court left that result undisturbed.

The Hill reported that Pennsylvania’s Judicial Conduct Board suspended Cohen over dozens of posts that praised Democrats, including former President Biden and Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), and pushed policies such as raising the minimum wage. The board branded the activity “partisan cheerleading.” Cohen also lost his pensions, court filings show.

Cohen cast the posts as speech on matters of public concern. His lawyers argued that judges are public officials speaking to constituents, not ordinary government employees, and that lower courts applied too weak a First Amendment standard. The Court did not take the case.

Decades in politics, then a judgeship

Cohen is not a political newcomer who stumbled into social media. He previously served more than four decades in the Pennsylvania Legislature and ran for the judgeship as a Democrat. Once on the bench, the same partisan habits followed him onto Facebook.

That history matters. Voters and litigants are entitled to a judge who decides cases, not a campaign surrogate with a robe. When a sitting judge fills a public feed with praise for party leaders and signature progressive causes, the line between the courtroom and the stump speech collapses.

Pennsylvania’s judicial discipline system treated that collapse as misconduct. The suspension stuck through the state courts. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court applied the balancing test typically used when a government worker claims employer discipline violated free-speech rights. Cohen’s side said that framework was the wrong fit for a judge. The Judicial Conduct Board said the opposite.

Lawyers pressed a First Amendment fight

Cohen’s attorneys framed the dispute as a national free-speech problem for the judiciary. They urged the justices to step in and set clearer rules.

His lawyers wrote in the petition:

"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."

His counsel at DLA Piper pressed the same theme in filings aimed at winning review.

They 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."

Those are serious claims. They also skip past a basic expectation: a judge’s public platform is not a party newsletter. Impartiality is not a branding exercise. It is the job.

The high court’s refusal to hear the matter fits a broader pattern of selective engagement with politically charged fights, including fights that have drawn sharp internal criticism over how the Court handles emergency docket disputes.

Discipline board said the rules were already clear

Pennsylvania’s Judicial Conduct Board, represented before the Court by Stanford Law School’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, told the justices the case was not a hard call. In the board’s telling, Cohen’s posts were not protected judicial commentary. They were partisan cheerleading, and long-standing ethics rules already cover that ground.

Board-side filings put it bluntly:

"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 board also argued there is no precedent supporting the idea that judges may engage in that kind of posting under the First Amendment. In other words, Cohen was not being singled out for novel speech. He was being held to a standard judges already know.

That standard exists for a reason. Courts depend on public confidence. Confidence dies when a judge sounds like a precinct captain. Taxpayers fund the bench so disputes get fair hearings, not so officeholders can keep campaigning after they put on the robe.

Similar questions of judicial role and public trust have surfaced in other settings, including when Justice Alito stepped aside from a major climate case after earlier recusal pressure.

What the Court left standing

By turning away the petition, the Supreme Court left intact a state discipline outcome that cost Cohen his judicial position and his pensions. No reinstatement came from this trip to Washington. No new nationwide rule on judicial social-media speech came with it either. The suspension stands as the lower courts wrote it.

Cohen’s team wanted the justices to treat the case as a clean vehicle for expanding First Amendment breathing room for judges. The board wanted the justices to treat it as a routine ethics enforcement action. The Court chose not to referee the fight.

That choice lands in a term already full of high-stakes institutional fights, from map fights such as when the Supreme Court again blocked a Missouri GOP House map to administrative fights over election systems after the Court cleared expanded SAVE database citizenship checks.

None of those matters revise Cohen’s record. The verified core remains simple. A longtime Democratic politician won a judgeship, kept posting partisan praise for Democratic leaders and causes, faced formal discipline in 2024, lost his pensions, and failed to get the U.S. Supreme Court to erase the penalty.

Judges are not party spokesmen

Cohen’s lawyers warned of a chill on judicial speech and political interference in the courts. The facts on the page show a different problem: a judge who used a public Facebook presence for partisan signaling while holding an office that demands neutrality.

Raising the minimum wage, praising a Democratic president, and boosting a Democratic governor are ordinary political acts for a legislator or activist. They are a different matter for a sitting judge. The Judicial Conduct Board drew that line. State courts enforced it. The Supreme Court declined to unwind it.

Public confidence in the judiciary does not require judges to live as mute monks. It does require them to stop acting like campaign staff. Cohen’s posts, as described in the record, crossed into partisan cheerleading. The discipline that followed was not an attack on the rule of law. It was a defense of it.

If judges want the authority to decide other people’s rights, they can live with limits on turning the bench into a party platform.