Wecht
HARRISBURG, Pa. – Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice David Wecht is renouncing the Democratic Party, announcing yesterday that antisemitism among its members is no longer tolerable.
Wecht was one of five Democrats on the seven-person court but will now be an Independent during his second 10-year term, which ends in 2035. His statement noted he married his wife at the Tree of Life Congregation, where years later 11 people were killed by a mass shooter at the synagogue.
“That terror came from the right. Jew-hatred has always festered on the fringe of that sector,” he wrote.
“In the years that have followed, that same hatred has grown on the left. Increasingly, it has moved from the fringe to the mainstream. It is the duty of all good people to fight this virus, and to do so before it is too late.”
Antisemitism has become a larger topic in Pennsylvania courts since the Gaza war began in 2023. President Trump’s fight with the University of Pennsylvania over a possibly hostile work environment for Jews has made headlines while the school has resisted information-gathering efforts from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
A Jewish former student at Carnegie Mellon University has sued the school for discrimination and late last year convinced a federal judge to make it disclose how much money it receives from Qatar.
And also last year, a Jewish club at Haverford College lost its lawsuit alleging antisemitism on campus.
“From 1998 to 2001, years that preceded my judicial career, I served as Vice-Chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. In the quarter century that has passed since then, the Democratic Party has changed,” Wecht wrote.
“Nazi tattoos, jihadist chants, intimidation and attacks at synagogues, and other hateful anti-Jewish invective and actions are minimized, ignored, and even coddled. Acquiescence to Jew-hatred is now disturbingly common among activists, leaders and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party.
“I can no longer abide this. So, I won’t. I am no longer registered within any political party.”
Though his allegiance to the Democratic Party alarmed Republicans when he first ran for the bench, Wecht has seemingly not been devoted to its usual causes in the civil justice system.
A notable dissent in a 2025 asbestos ruling criticized his colleagues on the court who opened the doors for cases against employers that were previously protected by legislation – the Occupational Disease Act. The majority said the ODA, which required workers to bring suit within four years of their last exposure, shouldn’t apply to asbestos cases because diseases have long latency periods.
"Put simply, I believe that today's decision uses and abuses the tools of statutory interpretation to distort, rather than uncover, the legislature's true intent," he added.
Wecht was sympathetic to calls by the trial bar to extend the state’s consumer-protection law to cover statements companies didn’t make about their product’s performance, but he also voted against one of their favorite moves – filing personal injury cases in Philadelphia, no matter where the accident took place.
And when a seven-year timeframe for medical-malpractice lawsuits came up, Wecht issued a dissent against extending it to 12 years. That statute of repose had been included in a tort-reform package early this century that was celebrated by health-care providers.
“(I)t is not this court’s role to upend duly enacted legislation simply because we might sometimes deem it imperfect or unwise,” he wrote.
His Monday statement on leaving the Democratic Party says his voting registration now reflects the independence of his work.
“In Pennsylvania, and in the United States of America, we enjoy robust rights and liberties, bequeathed to us by our great Founders,” Wecht said.
“These freedoms have helped to make this the greatest civilization that the world has ever seen. There have been other great civilizations in the past, and almost all of them have deteriorated and declined when Jew-hatred grew and metastasized.
“We all should awaken now to what is happening. I am confined to a judicial role, and in that role, I maintain independence at all times and in all respects. My voting registration now reflects my independence as well. As Shakespeare’s Polonius told his Laertes: ‘This above all: to thine own self be true.’
“It is my hope that Pennsylvanians, and Americans, of all viewpoints and backgrounds will oppose and resist the scourge of Jew-hatred before it.”
