Pa. Supreme Court Justice David Wecht leaves the Democratic Party over ‘acquiescence to Jew-hatred’
The justice from Allegheny County said he was no longer registered with any political party.
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht announced Monday that he was leaving the Democratic Party, citing “acquiescence to Jew-hatred.”
Wecht, 63, has been a member of the court’s liberal 5-2 majority and was retained for a second 10-year term in November in an election that Democratic donors — and the Democratic Party — spent millions on.
He said he was no longer registered with any political party.
The justice from Allegheny County said in a statement that his former party had changed since he was the Pennsylvania Democratic Party’s vice chair 25 years ago. When a gunman in 2018 targeted Jewish worshipers at Pittsburgh‘s Tree of Life Synagogue, where Wecht married, the assailant was motivated by right-wing ideology, the justice’s statement said. But in the year since, “that same hatred has grown on the left.”
“Nazi tattoos, jihadist chants, intimidation and attacks at synagogues, and other hateful anti-Jewish invective and actions are minimized, ignored, and even coddled,” Wecht said. “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.”
(The “Nazi tattoos” reference appears to be about Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate from Maine, whose SS skull-and-crossbones symbol tattoo prompted media scrutiny last year. He said he got the tattoo while in Croatia with the military and did not know it was a Nazi symbol.)
Wecht’s chamber did not make him available Monday, and only said the change followed “many recent events, across the nation.” Eugene DePasquale, the chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, a Democrat whose future party affiliation has been a topic of media reports in recent days, said in a post on X that “the Democratic Party must confront its own rising antisemitism problem.”
“As I’ve affirmed, I’m not changing my party—but I fully understand David’s personal choice,” Fetterman said.
» READ MORE: John Fetterman says he’s not switching parties. Here’s why everyone’s talking about it anyway.
The Pennsylvania Democratic Party and other Democrat-aligned groups spent more than $14 million to retain Wecht and two other Democratic justices in the 2025 election, as Republicans attempted to unseat the trio in hopes of reshaping the court.
Wecht won retention for a second 10-year term with 60% of the vote in November.
Before joining the Supreme Court in 2016, Wecht served for four years as a Superior Court judge, and for nearly a decade as an Allegheny Common Pleas Court judge.
During his tenure on the Supreme Court the justice was part of the liberal majority in voting rights, environmental, and criminal justice reform cases, among others. In 2024, Wecht signaled he believed the Pennsylvania constitution guarantees a right to abortion access.
After his 10-year term, the will be eligible to run again for retention a couple of years before he reaches 75, Pennsylvania’s mandatory retirement age for judges.
Wecht vowed to “vindicate the legal rights that haters and extremists of all stripes enjoy,” and celebrated the liberties and freedoms that make the United States the “greatest civilization that the world has ever seen.”
“There have been other great civilizations in the past,“ the judge said, ”and almost all of them have deteriorated and declined when Jew-hatred grew and metastasized."
Staff writer Gillian McGoldrick contributed to this article.
