On July 1, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed SB 80, which puts party labels on general election ballots for candidates for Supreme Court Justice and Judge of a State Appeals Court. The office has always been partisan, with party nominees chosen in primaries. But the general election ballots always omitted party labels for those offices.

This outcome is ironic, because a decade ago, the Ohio Democratic Party sued to force the state to print such labels on general election ballots, but the party lost the case. Since then, however, Democratic nominees have been doing better than Republicans for those offices, so now it is the Republican majority in the legislature that decided they want party labels.