As Democrats nationally grapple with calls for a newer and younger generation of leaders, state-level Democrats are having a very different, and much quieter, age discussion: allowing judges to serve longer.
Democrats in Maryland and New York are pushing to increase the age of retirement for state judges from 70 to 75 and 76, respectively, via a ballot amendment. And in Louisiana voters will decide in the state’s April elections whether to increase the judicial retirement age from 70 to 75.
At least 31 states and the District of Columbia have mandatory judicial retirement ages, with most setting 70 as the maximum age (Vermont in 2003 established the highest retirement age at 90 years old).
Maryland state Sen. C. Anthony Muse, the Democrat who filed the bill to increase the state’s judicial retirement age, said in a January hearing that opponents of the bill “said, ‘Well, at age 70, judges’ mental capacity will decrease, et cetera,’ and I think that’s not true.”
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The 70 age limit “is not only outdated, but also detrimental to the judiciary and to the citizens it serves,” Muse wrote in a letter in support of his bill. “The average life expectancy in the United States has increased significantly since the 20th century, and many individuals in their 70s are fully capable of performing demanding roles, including those in the judiciary.”
Ultimately, Muse concluded, “[M]andatory retirement at 70 unnecessarily removes judges at the height of their careers. … Extending the age to 75 would allow Maryland to retain these seasoned professionals, ensuring continuity and stability in our courts.”
In Louisiana, state Rep. Kyle Green, the Democrat who introduced the measure that was added to the ballot, said in May that “our residents, our citizens, are living a lot longer. They’re still very vibrant, and so I think this strikes a really good balance.”
He added that other Southern states either have an age limit of 75 or have no mandatory age requirement, so increasing Louisiana’s judicial retirement age “would put us in line with the vast majority of our Southern peers.”
The conversation on judges’ ages is not nearly as politically contentious as the one concerning lawmakers’ ages, where Democratic grassroots groups and young activists have been actively challenging incumbents who they believe are too old to serve.
“There’s no political action committee I’m aware of. There’s no, like, ‘People Against Old Judges PAC,’” said Bill Raftery, a senior analyst with the National Center for State Courts who has written extensively on the topic.
“Conversely, there is no ‘National People in Favor of Older Judges PAC’ either,” Raftery continued. “This tends to be a very local, legal-culture understanding of it.”
For the legislators backing these measures, allowing older judges to serve is key to addressing problems with the judiciary, like managing a lack of judges, preventing disruptions in legal cases and keeping experienced judges on the bench.
Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Democratic member of the New York State Assembly who introduced the bill to increase the age-of-retirement requirement, told NOTUS his state “has a shortage of judges.” He added that the legislature has also added more seats in the judiciary “in the past several years … and there’s a need out there, so to force an experienced judge out at age 70 doesn’t make sense.”
In New York, the current judicial age limit of 70 was enacted as part of the state’s constitution in 1869. At the time, “70 made sense,” but now “76 is the new 70, I guess,” Dinowitz said.
Bills to increase judicial retirement ages tend to move smoothly through state chambers.
“A lot of these bills are coming out as close to bipartisan as you can possibly imagine in this time and age: 99-0s are not unheard of, 75-3s are not unheard of,” Raftery told NOTUS. (In Iowa, for example, where the legislature on its own can change the judicial age of retirement, lawmakers increased it from 72 to 78 without debate and with nearly no opposition).
The real divide exists not among legislators but between legislators and voters.
“Legislators are OK with submitting [these measures] to the ballot, voters are disinclined to approve them,” Raftery said.
Since 2011, 11 states have put measures on the ballot to either increase the judicial age of retirement or eliminate it altogether, but only two of those — in Florida and Pennsylvania — have passed, according to Ballotpedia. Previous efforts in Louisiana in 2014 and New York in 2013 failed, with 58% of voters in each state rejecting the measures. (Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo campaigned against the amendment so he could replace outgoing Republican judges and solidify a liberal majority on the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court.)
Dinowitz acknowledged that the fight regarding lawmakers’ ages, which has been gaining steam as the 2026 midterms draw closer, could bleed into that for judicial retirement ages.
If his bill were to pass and the issue was then brought to the voters, “It could become controversial because some people will say, you know … ‘They’re old enough, they don’t have to stay. Make room for younger people,’” Dinowitz said.
Maryland state Sen. Charles Sydnor, a Democrat who said he does not believe the state’s judicial retirement age should change, told NOTUS that the current retirement age of 70 “gives new judges an opportunity to come onto the bench.”
“In the past, in Maryland, the bench had not been very diverse,” Sydnor said. “As those people are aging off, the judiciary is reflecting or looking more like the state of Maryland, and to increase that age from 70 to 75, what you’re doing is you’re stopping younger attorneys who … could do a good job in those roles. You’re making it more difficult for them to then come into that pipeline.”
In Louisiana, Democratic state Rep. Robby Carter said during a floor debate on the state’s bill that “there gets to be a certain time in your life when you need to say, ‘Enough is enough.’”
“You don’t want judges up there who think that they’re still good but everybody’s scared to tell them, ‘You’re slipping it a little bit,’” Carter continued.
Supporters of increasing the retirement age are not discouraged by the unsuccessful record of past ballot measures.
“I wouldn’t at all be deterred by what happened in 2013,” said William Silverman, chair of the Committee for Modern Courts, a nonprofit that lobbies on legislation concerning the New York judiciary and supports increasing the state’s judicial retirement age.
Silverman told NOTUS that since it’s possible that the congressional age fight gets “mixed up” with the judicial retirement age discussion, it’s “so important to have some kind of public education” on judicial-reform ballot measures “so that people understand that what we need from judges is different than what we need from, you know, legislators.”
“When you don’t have enough judges, and then you force judges to retire, and then you replace them with inexperienced judges or don’t replace them at all, you know, that just makes the administrative administration of justice more difficult,” he said.
“A judge in their 70s is similar, you know, to a baseball player in their 30s,” Silverman continued. “It’s their prime.”
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