Judicial Retirement on the Ballot — Again, and Again, and Again

In May 2026, Louisiana voters will decide whether to increase the mandatory retirement age for its state court judges. This will be the fourth time in the last 30 years that voters have weighed in on the subject: There were related votes in 1995 (raise the age from 70 to 75: 38% in favor), 2003 (allow judges to finish out their term: 53% in favor), 2014 (eliminate mandatory retirement: 42% in favor), and an upcoming vote in May 2026 (raise the age from 70 to 75).¹

The debate is a microcosm of a 30-year national effort to address judicial retirement in an era of retiring boomers, constrained finances, and increased life expectancy. The last decade, like the one before it (which I discussed in this journal in 2015),² has seen numerous efforts to repeal or increase mandatory judicial retirement ages — nearly all of which have been rejected by voters.³

Several factors have driven renewed examination of mandatory judicial retirement.

First, many judges are baby boomers now reaching the mandatory retirement ages set by their states. Some of these judges — like their predecessors from prior generations — are questioning whether such age limits are fair and, in some instances, whether they are constitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on this question in 1991, upholding Missouri’s mandatory judicial retirement age and finding it did not violate either the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 or the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.⁴ Legal challenges have increased, however, over the last decade, including from a group of New York judges who filed suit claiming that the state’s mandatory retirement age violated the state’s 2024 Equal Rights Amendment. A trial court in November 2025 rejected their arguments.⁵ The New York Supreme Court First Appellate Department upheld the lower court’s decision in March 2026.⁶

Second, there are structural and institutional concerns. Many simultaneous retirements can strain a state’s judiciary. In 2019, almost 40% of Minnesota state judges were at or approaching the mandatory retirement age.⁷ A simultaneous push for increases in judicial salaries aimed to make judicial jobs more attractive, perhaps to counter the “gray wave.”⁸ While Minnesota judicial salaries did increase by 2.5% in 2019 and by another 2.5% in 2020,⁹ no legislation has been submitted to increase or repeal the retirement age since 2017.¹⁰

Third, improvements in longevity and health mean people can remain active later in life. With better resources and longer lifespans than in past centuries, many older individuals can continue to perform mentally demanding roles — such as judicial duties — even if other aspects of work have become more physically demanding. Professor Francis X. Shen of the University of Minnesota Law School, in his review of the subject, notes there is no systematic judicial health data and “no published neuroscientific research suggesting that a particular age (sixty, sixty-five, seventy-five, and so on) should serve as the bright-line cutoff for cognitive decline.”¹¹

That said, some researchers have attempted to show benefits to mandatory retirement ages. Research conducted in 2020 suggests that mandatory retirement ages on courts of last resort (supreme courts) are associated with increased productivity (number of published opinions) and legal influence (number of forward citations to those opinions).¹²

Regardless of the data or lack thereof, voter interest in changing mandatory retirement ages has generally been limited and negative. Outside Florida and Pennsylvania, over the past two decades, ballot measures to change retirement ages have failed. In 2024, New Hampshire came close: 65.6% of voters approved an effort to raise the state’s mandatory judicial retirement age, but that fell short of the two-thirds majority required for a constitutional amendment.¹³ In January 2026, that amendment was reintroduced in the legislature, although it is unclear whether it will return to the ballot.¹⁴

In Pennsylvania, an initial proposal in spring 2016 to raise the mandatory judicial retirement age from 70 to 75 — later removed from the ballot by the legislature after ballots had already been cast — appeared headed for rejection.¹⁵ A revised amendment on the fall 2016 ballot removed references to the existing retirement age and asked instead whether the Pennsylvania Constitution should be amended to require judicial retirement at 75; it narrowly passed with 51.09% approval.¹⁶ In 2018, Florida voters approved an increase in its retirement age, but the change came as part of a package of amendments proposed by the state’s Constitutional Revision Commission that also included provisions for crime victims (“Marcy’s Law”) and de novo review of administrative agency decisions by courts and administrative law judges.¹⁷

Voters in Texas,¹⁸ Oregon,¹⁹ Wyoming,²⁰ and elsewhere have rejected proposals to extend judicial terms or raise retirement ages, in some cases by margins of roughly two-thirds. In Texas, there was little to no formal opposition to House Joint Resolution 107, which would have raised retirement from 75 to 79 and had broad support in the House (141–5) and Senate (27–4); voters nevertheless rejected it by an almost 2-1 ratio.²¹

Other state constitutions allow the legislature to set retirement ages without voter approval. Virginia, for example, has adopted a staggered approach to increasing its mandatory retirement age over the past decade,²² while Iowa implemented an across-the-board increase in 2025.²³

For more information on state judicial retirement ages, along with data on their corresponding judicial retirement plans, visit www.ncsc.org/resources-courts/overview-state-judicial-retirement-plans.

WILLIAM E. RAFTERY is a senior knowledge management analyst for the National Center for State Courts.

1. See Nicole Fisher, Louisiana Voters to Decide on Raising Judicial Retirement Age from 70 to 75 in April 2026, Ballotpedia News (June 13, 2025), https://duke.is/LouisianaVote (describing the history of the various Louisiana ballot measures).
2. William E. Raftery, Happy Birthday! Now Get Out, 99 Judicature 5 (2015), https://duke.is/mandatoryjudicialretirement.
3. See Overview of State Judicial Retirement Plans, Nat’l Ctr. for State Cts., https://duke.is/NCSC (last visited Jan. 26, 2026), (noting that ballot measures to increase or repeal mandatory judicial retirement ages failed in Arizona, Hawai’i, Louisiana, New York, Ohio, Oregon, and Wyoming); see also Raftery, supra note 2, at 6 (explaining that most ballot measures to increase or repeal mandatory judicial retirement ages had failed up until 2015, save a 2002 measure in Vermont and narrow exceptions that “allowed judges to serve out their terms or to the end of the calendar year after reaching retirement age”).
4. Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452 (1991).
5. Miller v. State of New York, No. 163102/2025, 2025 WL 3296561 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Nov. 21, 2025).
6. In re Robert J. Miller v. New York, 2026 N.Y. Slip Op. 01518, at *1 (App. Div. 1st Dep’t Mar. 12, 2026).
7. Minn. Jud. Branch, FY20-21 Budget Request 19 (Feb. 13, 2019), https://duke.is/MinnesotaJudicialBudget.
8. See Stephen Montemayor, Judiciary Up Against a Gray Wave: $44.7 Million Budget Request Aims to Offset Impending Retirements, Star Trib. (Feb. 2, 2019), https://duke.is/MinnesotaBudgetIncrease (noting how mandatory judicial retirements prompted the Minnesota Judicial Branch to request increased judicial salaries).
9. Minnesota Comp. Council, Recommendations 4 (Mar. 29, 2021), https://duke.is/MinnesotaComp2021.
10. The last efforts in the Minnesota Legislature occurred in 2017. HF621, 90th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Minn. 2017); SF1044, 90th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Minn. 2017).
11. Francis X. Shen, Aging Judges, 81 Ohio St. L.J. 235, 281 (2020).
12. Elliott Ash & W. Bentley MacLeod, Mandatory Retirement for Judges Improved the Performance of U.S. State Supreme Courts, 16 Am. Econ. J.: Econ Pol’y 518, https://duke.is/ash-macleod.
13. N.H. Sec’y of State, 2024 General Election Results (last visited Jan. 16, 2025), https://duke.is/2024NHGeneralElectionResults.
14. CACR 9, 2026 Sess. (N.H. 2026).
15. Penn. Dep’t of State, Official Election Returns (Apr. 26, 2016), https://duke.is/2016PennPrimaryElectionResults.
16. Penn. Dep’t of State, Official Election Returns (Nov. 8, 2016), https://duke.is/2016PennGeneralElectionResults. For a review of the process by which the language was replaced, see Sprague v. Cortes, 145 A.3d 1136 (2016).
17. 75 is the new mandatory retirement age for judges, Fla. Bar, https://duke.is/FloridaRetirementAge (Dec. 1, 2018).
18. Tex. Sec’y of State, Proposition 13 Election Results (Nov. 7, 2023), https://duke.is/2023TexasProp13Results (roughly 37% of voters voted in favor of increasing the judicial retirement age from 75 to 79).
19. Or. Sec’y of State, 2016 General Election Official Results (Nov. 8, 2016), https://duke.is/2016OregonGeneralElectionResults (roughly 37% of voters voted in favor of eliminating the mandatory judicial retirement age).
20. Wyo. Sec’y of State, 2022 Statewide Constitutional Amendments Official Summary (Nov. 8, 2022), https://duke.is/2022WyomingGeneralElectionResults (roughly 39% of voters voted in favor of increasing the judicial retirement age from 70 to 75).
21. See William Melhado & Pooja Salhotra, Texas Voters Reject Proposal to Increase Judges’ Retirement Ages, Tex. Trib. (Nov. 7, 2023), https://duke.is/2023TexasVote.
22. Va. Code Ann. § 51.1-305 (2016).
23. Iowa Code § 602.1610 (2025).