Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht announced on Monday that he was changing his party affiliation from Democrat to Independent.

According to PoliticsPA, Wecht stated that his “jurisprudence and adjudication have always been independent, and they always will be. Now, my voting registration reflects that independence as well.”

Wecht was retained last November to serve another 10-year term.

In his statement, Wecht cited “Jew-hatred” within the Democratic Party as the motivating factor to change his affiliation.

“In 1998, my wife and I were married at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Congregation, on whose Board of Trustees I served. Twenty years later, in the very same sanctuary where our wedding occurred, the worst massacre of Jews in American history was perpetrated. That terror came from the right. Jew-hatred has always festered on the fringe of that sector,” Wecht said, according to PoliticsPA.

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He said “that same hatred has grown on the left.”

“Increasingly, it has moved from the fringe to the mainstream,” Wecht stated.

POLITICO shared further:

Wecht made a pointed jab at Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner, the favorite to win the party’s primary after former Gov. Janet Mills dropped out of the race.

In October, Platner revealed he’d gotten a tattoo of a widely recognized Nazi symbol while serving in the U.S. military in Croatia. Platner denied having knowledge of the symbol’s Nazi heritage, and had it covered days after publicly acknowledging the tattoo.

“In the quarter century that has passed since then, the Democratic Party has changed,” Wecht said. “Nazi tattoos, jihadist chants, intimidation and attacks at synagogues, and other hateful anti-Jewish invective and actions are minimized, ignored, and even coddled.”

Wecht’s party change will have minimal impact on the balance of power in the state’s Supreme Court. After losing Wecht, four Democratic justices occupy the seven-seat bench.

“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,” Wecht said.

“In Pennsylvania, and in the United States of America, we enjoy robust rights and liberties, bequeathed to us by our great Founders. 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,” he continued.

PoliticsPA noted:

Pennsylvania’s highest court saw Democrats with a 5-2 majority with Wecht joining fellow Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, Daniel McCaffrey and Chief Justice Debra Todd. Sallie Updyke Mundy and Brobson are the Republican-elected justices on the high court. Wecht’s decision shifts the proverbial balance to 4-2-1.

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