Gov. Jim Pillen has selected a sitting member of the Nebraska Supreme Court to fill the role of the court’s top judge following the announcement of longtime Chief Justice Michael Heavican that he will retire at the end of the month.
Jeffrey Funke will fill the role of chief justice, Pillen said Friday at a news conference. Funke has been a solidly conservative voice on the court since he was appointed in 2016 by then-Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts.
Last week, Funke was one of two justices who argued they would declare as unconstitutional state laws that restore voting rights to those who have completed the terms of their felony sentences. In his dissent, Funke sided with Republican state officials who blocked enforcement of a law passed by the Nebraska Legislature earlier this year to restore voting rights to those with felony convictions immediately after their sentence had been served.
Among those who voiced opposition to the new law was Pillen.
The high court ultimately found that Nebraska’s top election official had no authority to strip voting rights from people convicted of a felony so close to the Nov. 5 election.
Pillen’s pick of Funke for the chief justice slot means he’ll get to select another judge to fill Funke’s current seat on the bench as associate justice. Unlike many other states where supreme court justices are elected, Nebrask’as are appointed by the governor from a selection of candidates forwarded to him by a nominating committee.
According to a report last year by the Center for Public Integrity, state supreme courts have been moving ideologically to the right for decades. The report showed that in 1985, Democrats accounted for two-thirds of all state supreme court judges, but by 2020, more than half of state high court justices were Republican.
The 77-year-old Heavican announced his retirement in August, which is effective Oct. 31. Heavican was appointed as chief justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court in 2006 by Republican Gov. Dave Heineman.
Funke, 55, will fill his new roll on Nov. 1. For 10 years prior to his service on the high court, he served as a county and district state judge in southeastern Nebraska. Before his work as a judge, Funke also served as a county attorney and a public defender. He received his law degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Law.
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