A Defeat for Impartial Courts The damage caused by enormous amounts influence-seeking campaign money unleashed by recent Supreme Court rulings is spreading beyond elections for legislative and executive posts to contests for important state court judgeships. Following on those destructive decisions, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals ruled last week to deny matching funds under the state's pilot campaign financing program for judicial races to a Republican candidate, Allen Loughry II, for a seat on that court. The court acknowledged the state's compelling interest in preserving public trust in the impartiality of the courts from the taint of campaign spending by litigants. But it said it had to block the matching money because the United States Supreme Court had struck down a similar public campaign finance program in Arizona last year. Like West Virginia's campaign financing program for judicial races, the Arizona law triggered disbursement of additional public money when spending by a privately financed opponent reaches a certain threshold. But the Arizona ruling did not deal with judicial contests, which raise special concerns for preserving the appearance and reality of fair decision-making by elected judges. The West Virginia court should have recognized a judicial election exception to reach a different result. Instead, it applied the Supreme Court's wrongheaded view that providing public funds to underfinanced candidates based on an opponent's spending level impedes the free speech of the better-financed candidate. According to the state court ruling, West Virginia's matching program was not "narrowly tailored" to avoid infringing on the First Amendment rights of privately financed candidates. The ruling allows Mr. Loughry to engage in private fund-raising, which he agreed to forgo when he joined the public financing system and accepted an initial disbursement for his campaign. That's only fair. But it is a serious setback for judicial campaign reform.