President Joe Biden is facing calls from activists in his own party to shake up the Supreme Court after a number of unfavorable decisions for Democrats were released.
Many liberal activists and Democratic politicians are calling for Biden to take action to reform the Supreme Court, calling for adding more justices and establishing term limits, according to The Wall Street Journal. The calls come after a number of decisions were released by the Supreme Court where the conservative majority ruled against issues like race-based college admissions and student loan debt forgiveness. (RELATED: Here’s How The Supreme Court’s Latest Term Reshaped America)
“President Biden should run on term limits in 2024. If he does, it will perhaps wake the court up so that they stop showing contempt for American public sentiment,” said Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California, according to the WSJ. He called for 18-year term limits for future Supreme Court justices, saying the court is “dominated by stubborn, old, extremist jurists who have contempt and little understanding for modern American life.”
Despite the calls, Biden has resisted the idea of reforming the Supreme Court. Following the court’s decision Thursday against race-based admissions in higher education, the president said in an MSNBC interview that “If we start the process of trying to expand the court, we’re going to politicize it, maybe forever, in a way that is not healthy.”
People don’t have to live under constant fear of the Supreme Court.
We can’t sit on our hands while these justices carry out the bidding of right wing organizations.
Expand the Court.
— Senator Tina Smith (@SenTinaSmith) June 30, 2023
“People don’t have to live under constant fear of the Supreme Court. We can’t sit on our hands while these justices carry out the bidding of right wing organizations,” Democratic Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith said via Twitter on Friday. “Expand the court.”
In 2021, Biden established a commission to review possible reforms to the Supreme Court in an executive order, including looking into changes to its “membership and size,” according to a White House press release. Critics of the move pointed to C-SPAN footage from 1983, where Biden said that packing the court “was a bonehead idea.”
Organizations have also been jumping into the controversy. Planned Parenthood, in a press release, said, “The courts have been used as a vehicle to advance a dangerous agenda against abortion rights — federal court reform is essential for the fight for reproductive freedom,” calling for an expansion of both the number of judges on the federal district courts and the Supreme Court as well as imposing term limits on justices.
Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Clinton and liberal activist, said on Twitter that the Supreme Court is “off the rails,” suggesting term limits, rotating, justices, and expanding the court. “One thing is for certain: we can’t allow the extremists and Big Money interests who have hijacked the Court to go unchecked,” he said.
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