Thomas G. Saylor

Thomas G. Saylor (born December 14, 1946) is the Chief Justice of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Republican Party. Prior to his election to the Supreme Court, he served as a judge of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

He was born in Meyersdale, Somerset County, Pennsylvania.[1] He received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia in 1969, a Juris Doctor from the Columbia University School of Law in 1972, and a Master of Laws from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2004.[2]

Saylor worked as a prosecutor in Somerset County from 1972 to 1982, before serving as a Director of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Consumer Protection from 1982 to 1983.[1][2] He was First Deputy Attorney General for Pennsylvania from 1983 to 1987, and served on the Superior Court of Pennsylvania from 1993 to 1997.[1][2]

Saylor began service as a justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on January 1, 1997, and became Chief Justice in 2015, when Ronald D. Castille left the court on reaching the mandatory retirement age.

In August 2018, Saylor wrote for the majority when it found that the criminal conviction of a rapper for making a song entitled "Fuck the Police" did not violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution because, he determined, the song contained true threats.[3][4]

According to Common Pleas Judge Barry Feudale, Saylor complained to him that African American former Supreme Court Justice Cynthia Baldwin had "caused us a lot of trouble when she was on the Supreme Court because of her minority agenda.” In a 2019 affidavit, Feudale, who presided over the grand jury that indicted Jerry Sandusky during the Penn State child sex abuse scandal when Baldwin was the general counsel for Pennsylvania State University, suggested that Saylor was using alleged technical errors Baldwin had made during the case as a pretext for disciplinary hearings that were actually intended as harassment.[5]