For Immediate Release

FIRST DAY OF SUPREME COURT TERM BRINGS MORE MOMENTUM FOR COURT EXPANSION

STOLEN SCOTUS ALREADY EAGER TO DISMANTLE MARRIAGE EQUALITY; 30+ BLACK- & BROWN-LED ORGANIZATIONS JOIN THE FIGHT FOR COURT EXPANSION

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (October 9, 2020) —

“We are mere hours into the first day of this Supreme Court term, and Justices Alito and Thomas are already threatening to dismantle marriage equality. It’s no surprise that calls for expansion are continuing to grow every single day. It could not be more clear that everything we care about is at stake — including democracy itself — unless we expand the court.”
— Take Back the Court Director, Aaron Belkin

To keep the fight going, Take Back the Court is proud to be a partner to Just Democracy, a coalition of grassroots civil rights and social justice groups from around the country calling for bold structural change to ensure our democracy works for all Americans. Today, Just Democracy has announced over 34 member organizations that have signed onto its core proposals, including expanding the Supreme Court:

A Little Piece of Light
Alliance of Families for Justice
Arizona Coalition for Change
Black Male Voter Project
Black Women for Wellness Action Project
Black Women Organized for Political Action
Black Women’s Health Imperative
Caravan for Racial Justice
Center for Community Change
Center for Popular Democracy
Christian Leadership Conference
Colorado Black Women for Political Action
Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights
Community Justice Reform Coalition
Demos
Faithworks
Financial Services Innovation Coalition
GoGo Long Live
Health in Her Hue
Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression
Legal Empowerment and Advocacy Hub
National Black Justice Coalition
North Carolina Black Alliance
Pure Legacee
Purpose Over Pain: Ending Violence over living with the Pain
Sister Love
Soul 2 Soul Sisters
Stand Up America
Team Enough
TransLatin Coalition
Truth and Conciliation
We Testify our Abortion Stories
Women Investing in Leadership Development
Working Families

ICYMI, the past few days also saw several strong arguments in the media in favor of court expansion.

First, Slate’s resident SCOTUS experts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern make a strong case that expanding the court is necessary to avoid total catastrophe. Excerpts:

If a 6–3 conservative majority decides all these cases, they would swiftly transform American life and put millions in danger. By the end of this term, SCOTUS could revoke more than 20 million Americans’ health insurance and legalize odious discrimination against same-sex couples. It could not just greenlight abortion bans but allow states to prosecute women who terminate their pregnancies. It could abolish dozens of states’ gun safety laws, further flooding our communities with weapons of war. [...]

In the face of these impending calamities for democracy, Democrats have a binary choice. They can accept the legitimacy of a court whose membership has been yanked far to the right by Republicans’ anti-democratic schemes. Or they could add seats to the court and spare the country from the Sarlacc pit into which it’s poised to tumble.

Meanwhile, in the Atlantic, Lawfare's Executive Editor Susan Henessey and Managing Editor Quinta Jurecic explain why they recently changed their minds about expanding the court. Excerpts:

Yet even with the president hospitalized and three Republican senators infected with the virus, the Republican Party is barreling ahead with its effort to install Barrett mere weeks before Election Day. The reckless rush to vote is an indication of the desperate and corrosive power grab at play, one that places the future of the Court at risk. If Republicans succeed, and Democrats win the Senate and the White House in November, Democrats must add seats for additional justices—not as a means of political one-upmanship, but, paradoxically, to save the Court. [...]

The current battle over the Supreme Court changes the calculus; if Barrett is confirmed and Trump loses the election, adhering to norms and accepting the status quo on January 20 poses a greater harm than expanding the Court would. We have now come to believe, more in sorrow than in anger, that adding justices may be the only way to restore the institutional legitimacy of the Court. [...]

Lastly, in the Washington Post, professor of history Jason Scott Smith, who literally wrote the book on the New Deal, explains that adding seats to the Supreme Court is actually UNPACKING, not packing it. It's worth a look. Excerpts:

“There is a lot of talk of the president ‘packing’ the court,” La Follette declared. “Let’s not be misled by a red herring. The court has been ‘packed’ for years — 'packed’ in the interests of Economic Royalists, ‘packed’ for the benefit of the Liberty Leaguers, ‘packed’ in the cause of reaction and laissez-faire.” For La Follette, expanding the court was an act that by definition meant “unpacking” it. The appointment of new justices would counter the power held by justices who narrowly interpreted the law to advance conservative ideology. A president who was reelected by huge margins in both the popular vote and in the electoral college had, in La Follette’s view, a mandate from the voters to take action. [...]

If Democrats are to replace the “McConnell Rule,” the rationale McConnell used to keep Scalia’s seat open so that Obama and the voters who twice elected him to the presidency would be denied power, they might well consider adopting a “La Follette Rule.” Within this framework, Democratic candidates should run for office on a clear plan to rebalance and “unpack” the Supreme Court by proposing to change the number of justices, a change that has occurred multiple times in the history of the United States.

All of these new calls for expansion, join an already growing list of endorsers you can see here.

Take Back the Court raises awareness about the urgent need to expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court to address the theft of the court by Senator Mitch McConnell during the Obama Administration. Without adding seats, Congress will not be able to restore the right to vote, ensure reproductive freedom, protect workers, halt our climate emergency, or pass new legislation. Court expansion, which can be accomplished without a constitutional amendment, is the only reform that enables the un-rigging of the system and the restoration of democracy. Learn more: https://www.takebackthecourt.today/