The Supreme Court has refused to hear a suspended Pennsylvania judge’s First Amendment challenge after he spent years posting partisan praise for Joe Biden and Democratic policies from the bench.
Fox News reported that the high court on Monday denied without comment the petition from former Judge Mark Cohen, who lost his place on the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas after a run of politically charged Facebook activity.
Cohen, a former Democratic state lawmaker who began serving on that court in 2018, kept posting even after a warning to stop. Pennsylvania’s highest court concluded that the volume and tone of his posts made him appear an advocate for the Democratic Party rather than a neutral jurist.
His suspension also triggered the forfeiture of his judicial pension and prior public-service pensions, his Supreme Court petition stated. The career fight is over. The ethics rules that caught him still stand.
Cohen did not limit himself to one stray comment. He made dozens of politically charged Facebook posts while on the bench.
In November 2021 he promoted Biden’s Build Back Better legislation and said its passage would improve “many, many American lives.” A year later, on Biden’s birthday, he called the then-president “an excellent President” and said he looked forward to “many more achievements.”
He also posted in favor of higher minimum wage laws and against restrictions on elective abortions. In another post he highlighted that he had consistently received an “F” rating from the National Rifle Association while serving in the state legislature.
Those were not private asides. They were public signals from a sitting judge. Pennsylvania’s Judicial Conduct Board later described the pattern as “partisan cheerleading” and said his suspension reflected a straightforward application of familiar rules that judges around the country have followed for decades.
Pennsylvania’s highest court did not treat the posts as harmless free expression. It found that the sheer volume and the tone made Cohen look like a Democratic Party advocate. That finding sat at the center of the discipline case.
Judges are not ordinary political actors. Litigants walk into court expecting a referee, not a campaign surrogate. When a judge repeatedly cheers one party’s president, agenda, and cultural positions, the appearance of neutrality collapses. Pennsylvania’s system treated that collapse as a rules violation, not a personality quirk.
Cohen’s side framed the fight differently. His lawyers at DLA Piper argued the discipline crossed a constitutional line. One of his lawyers told Law.com the case raised core free-speech stakes for the judiciary.
"Allowing judges to be disciplined based on the perceived ‘tone’ or ‘volume’ of lawful speech promotes arbitrary enforcement, invites political interference in the judicial branch, and threatens to undermine the rule of law,"
The same lawyer pressed the Supreme Court to take the case as a clarifying moment.
"This case presents an urgent opportunity for the court to restore constitutional clarity and reestablish the First Amendment’s protection of the rights of sitting judges to speak on matters of public concern."
DLA Piper did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment on the high court’s denial.
Cohen appealed to the Supreme Court in April. On Monday the justices declined to hear the case and offered no written explanation. Denials without comment are common, and they leave the lower ruling intact.
The Judicial Conduct Board had already told the justices they did not need to take the appeal. In the board’s view, Cohen’s social media activity was partisan cheerleading, and the suspension applied long-standing limits on how judges may speak while holding office.
That is the practical result. A state system warned a judge, documented a pattern of party-line advocacy, suspended him, and imposed pension consequences tied to the removal. The Supreme Court left that outcome undisturbed.
Cohen’s petition stressed the personal cost. Suspension meant forfeiture of his judicial pension and earlier public-service pensions. The free-speech claim did not reverse that penalty once the high court refused to intervene.
Sitting judges may hold private political views. What they may not do is turn the public square into a rolling endorsement reel for one party’s president and platform while still wearing the robe. Pennsylvania treated Cohen’s Facebook record as proof he had crossed that line. The Supreme Court’s silence leaves that judgment in force.
Taxpayers fund courts so disputes get decided under law, not under a judge’s preferred party platform. When a jurist posts praise for Biden’s legislative agenda, celebrates him as “an excellent President,” and advertises an NRA “F” rating as a badge of legislative service, the public is entitled to ask whether the bench still looks fair. Pennsylvania’s answer was no. The nation’s highest court did not reopen the question.
Judicial ethics rules exist for a reason. If they mean anything, they mean a judge cannot run a partisan booster club from the courthouse and expect the system to look away.
