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      What ethical controversies are US supreme court justices facing?

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      All-expenses-paid trips, book promotions and property selling.Some of the US supreme court’s conservative judges are mired in ethical controversies that have prompted members of Congress to call for not only testimony from Chief Justice John Roberts, but also for formal accountability, for what they say is democracy’s sake.Senate Democrats this week have called for a vote on a bill to establish a code of conduct for the supreme court justices similar to those that other government agencies must follow. The bill, unlikely to pass in a divided Congress, would demand the court create a code within 180 days and establish rules on recusals related to potential conflicts of interest and disclosure of gifts and travel.The ethical concerns involving court justices have continued to mount. Most recently, the Guardian reported that lawyers who have conducted business before the US supreme court have paid an aide to Clarence Thomas money via Venmo.Here’s a rundown of the ethical controversies supreme court justices have been involved in.Real estate transactionsClarence Thomas’s friend Harlan Crow, the Texas Republican billionaire mega-donor, bought three properties that the conservative justice and his family owned, including Thomas’s childhood home in Savannah, Georgia, where Thomas’s mother still lives. Crow made significant renovations, cleared blight and let Thomas’s mother live there rent-free. The cost was more than $100,000 but was not disclosed. Crow has said the purchase was made to eventually turn the home into a museum for Thomas.Justice Neil Gorsuch sold a 40-acre property he co-owned in rural Colorado after he became a justice, Politico reported. Brian Duffy, the chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, which has had more than 20 cases before the supreme court, bought the property in 2017. Gorsuch disclosed the sale and reportedly made between $250,000 and $500,000, but he left blank the buyer’s identity.School supportCrow paid thousands of dollars in private school tuition for two boarding schools that Thomas’s great-nephew attended, ProPublica reported. The transaction was not disclosed.An investigation by the Associated Press revealed how colleges and universities attract supreme court justices to campuses as a way to generate donations for institutions, raising ethical concerns around a court that, unlike other government agencies, does not have a formal code of conduct. The visits have resulted in all-expenses-paid teaching opportunities and book sales. Government aides from other branches such as Congress and the presidency are barred from using government resources for personal gain.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMoney to partnersThe Republican activist Leonard Leo paid Thomas’s wife, Ginni, $25,000 for polling services in January 2012, telling the Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway to make “no mention of Ginni”, the Washington Post reported. It’s unclear whether that is a direct ethical concern for Clarence Thomas but it may constitute a conflict of interest.Ginni, who also attended the January 6 attack at the Capitol, reportedly exchanged text messages with the then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, encouraging him to support then president Donald Trump’s false election fraud claims aimed at subverting the results of his 2020 electoral defeat. The Judicial Education Project, a law firm tied to Leo, filed a brief to the supreme court in the landmark case that eventually gutted the Voting Rights Act not long after the payment was made.Roberts’ wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, ran a legal recruiting firm that raised ethical concerns since she made millions of dollars in commissions from placing lawyers at firms, some of which appeared before the court. The New York Times obtained a letter from a former colleague of Roberts to the US justice department and Congress inquiring about the connection.Luxury tripsFor more than two decades, Thomas accepted millions of dollars’ worth of luxury trips on private planes and “superyachts”, and vacations from his friend Crow without reporting them on financial disclosure forms, ProPublica reported. Crow has said that he did not attempt to influence Thomas politically or legally nor did he discuss pending supreme court cases. Thomas said he was told he was not required to disclose the trips. Notably, a company linked to Crow was involved in at least one case before the US supreme court, Bloomberg reported. Thomas did not recuse himself from the case.Justice Samuel Alito reportedly took a private jet to an all-expenses-covered fishing trip to Alaska, paid for by the hedge fund billionaire and conservative mega-donor Paul Singer. NPR reports that Singer has been involved in 10 appeals to the supreme court. In an unprecedented move, Alito defended himself in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, declaring he did not have to recuse himself and followed what he “understood to be standard practice”. More

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      Iowa Republicans pass six-week abortion ban

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      Iowa’s state legislature voted on Tuesday night to ban most abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy, a time before most people know they are pregnant.Republican lawmakers, which hold a majority in both the Iowa house and senate, passed the anti-abortion bill after the governor, Kim Reynolds, called a special session to seek a vote on the ban.The bill passed with exclusively Republican support in a rare, one-day legislative burst lasting more than 14 hours.The legislation will take immediate effect after the governor signs it on Friday and will prohibit abortions after the first sign of cardiac activity – usually around six weeks, with some exceptions for cases of rape or incest. It will allow for abortions up until 20 weeks of pregnancy only under certain conditions of medical emergency. Abortions in the state were previously allowed up to 20 weeks.“The Iowa supreme court questioned whether this legislature would pass the same law they did in 2018, and today they have a clear answer,” Reynolds said in a statement. “The voices of Iowans and their democratically elected representatives cannot be ignored any longer, and justice for the unborn should not be delayed.”The legislation is the latest in a raft of anti-abortion laws passed in states across the country since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year, ending the nationwide constitutional right to abortion. A number of states, including a swath of the southern US, have passed full bans on abortion without exceptions for cases of rape or incest.Preparations were already under way to quickly file legal challenges in court and get the measure blocked, once Reynolds signs it into law.A similar six-week ban that the legislature passed in 2018 was blocked by the state’s supreme court one year later. Since that decision, however, Roe has been overturned and a more conservative court ruled that abortion is no longer a constitutionally protected right in Iowa. The court was split 3-3 last month on whether to remove the block on the 2018 law, a deadlock which resulted in Reynolds seeking to pass new legislation in a special session this week.“The ACLU of Iowa, Planned Parenthood and the Emma Goldman Clinic remain committed to protecting the reproductive rights of Iowans to control their bodies and their lives, their health and their safety – including filing a lawsuit to block this reckless, cruel law,” the ACLU of Iowa’s executive director, Mark Stringer, said in a statement.In the meantime, Planned Parenthood North Central States has said it will refer patients out of state if they’re scheduled for abortions in the next few weeks. The organization, the largest abortion provider in the state, will continue to provide care to patients who present before cardiac activity is detected.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs state lawmakers debated the bill, crowds of protesters gathered in the capitol rotunda in support of reproductive rights and chanted “vote them out” at Republican legislators. A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa survey from last year showed that around 61% of Iowans were generally in favor of abortion access, a number that tracks with nationwide beliefs about the right to abortion.During a public hearing on Tuesday before the vote, lawmakers heard from advocates both for and against the bill who gave brief statements in the chambers. A range of medical professionals and reproductive rights activists urged the legislature to reconsider the bill, warning that it would cause immense societal harm, reduce bodily autonomy and prevent physicians from caring for patients.“You would be forcing a woman to a lifelong obligation which affects her education, career, family and community,” Amy Bingaman, an obstetrician and gynecologist, told lawmakers.Advocates of the bill, many from Christian organizations and hardline anti-abortion activist groups, thanked lawmakers during the hearing and touted the bill as a victory for their movement.The Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Chief justice John Roberts urged to testify on ethics scandals for ‘good of democracy’

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      The US chief justice should testify before Congress about ethics scandals besetting his supreme court “for the good of democracy”, a leading Californian progressive said.The justices are “so cloistered, they’re so out of touch”, the congressman Ro Khanna told MSNBC on Sunday. “They don’t have a sense of what life is like, so my plea to him would be for the good of democracy come testify. What are you afraid of?”The Democratic-controlled Senate judiciary committee has requested that Roberts testify about reports regarding relations between justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch and rightwing donors or, in Gorsuch’s case, the chief of a prominent law firm involved in a property purchase.Thomas’s extensive gifts from the billionaire donor Harlan Crow have been exhaustively reported by ProPublica, which also reported an Alaska fishing trip Alito took with the billionaire Paul Singer.The justices failed to disclose such links. All deny wrongdoing. Singer, Crow and the law firm executive also deny wrongdoing and say they and the justices did not discuss politics or business before the court.Supreme court justices are nominally subject to the same ethics rules as other federal judges but in practice govern themselves.Questions have also been raised about the career of Roberts’ wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, who, according to the New York Times, “has made millions recruiting lawyers to prominent law firms, some of which have business before the court”.In April, turning down the invitation to testify before the Senate judiciary committee, John Roberts cited concerns about the separation of powers.Amid progressive anger over decisions on abortion, affirmative action, student debt relief and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, calls for reform to a court controlled 6-3 by conservatives after Donald Trump appointed three justices in four years have grown ever louder.Public trust in the court is at all-time lows.Speaking to the former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki, Khanna told MSNBC: “The court is moving us backwards and young people in particular are outraged that the court is taking away the relief of student loans. They’re moving to a time where colleges used to be just for the wealthy and largely white, so I do think this can energise young people, in particular working-class voters.”Calls for structural reform seem to have as little chance of success as calls for Thomas to resign or be impeached – calls perhaps likely to increase after the publication by the Times on Sunday of an investigation of the justice’s membership of the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, “a cluster of extraordinarily wealthy, largely conservative members who lionised him and all that he had achieved”.Republicans control the House and trail Democrats by two seats in the Senate, all but ensuring a block on any such move. Furthermore, Joe Biden is against major reform, such as changing the size of the court or imposing term limits.Khanna said: “Voters know that the court is just out of touch with their lives, that the court is taking away their rights, taking away women’s rights to control their own body, taking away students’ relief in terms of the student loans. The president forgave the loans. The supreme court took that money away.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“[Voters] see these justices, they see all the ethical conflicts, and they’re saying, ‘Enough with it. Let’s have a clean slate and term limits.’“I’ve said everything should be on the table, but … it’s not an easy thing to do. Often people see that it is polarising or partisan. I guess term limits is an easier first step … and a judicial code of conduct of ethics.”The Senate judiciary chair, Dick Durbin, has promised a vote on ethics reform. Any measure would be highly unlikely to pass the Republican House.Khanna said: “Even Republicans in Congress, if we go out and have someone buy us lunch, the vast majority of us would have to disclose it and have all these ethics rules. I’m just flabbergasted that the supreme court doesn’t have any of those. The limits are so low for members of Congress, anybody who works in the federal government, and this is just a different set of rules.”Khanna did not support an attempt to force the chief justice to testify, via a subpoena, a move called for by another prominent House progressive, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.“I would support hearings,” he said. “I think that the chief justice should testify.“Look, I’ve met the chief justice. I met him a couple of years ago and he said he cared about the legitimacy of the court. The legitimacy of democracy. Well, if he cares about the legitimacy of democracy, he should come testify.” More

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      ‘Democracy is at risk’: inside the fight for supreme court reform

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      The supreme court has concluded another term that upended Americans’ lives.Last week, the court’s conservative supermajority ruled against race-conscious decisions in college admissions, overturning decades of precedent supporting affirmative action. A day later, the six conservative justices both struck down Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan and sided with a Colorado-based business owner who wanted to refuse service to same-sex couples.As the conservative justices’ decisions attracted criticism, their behavior away from the bench also sparked alarm. Reports emerged that conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito had accepted previously undisclosed gifts and trips from wealthy stakeholders whose business interests at times clashed with cases before the supreme court.The outcry unleashed over the justices’ ethics scandals, combined with the widespread disapproval of their opinions, has intensified calls to reform the supreme court. And although court reform efforts have previously been denounced as radical overreach, more Americans are warming to the idea in the face of a six-three conservative supermajority issuing decisions viewed as largely out of step with the country’s principles and priorities.“Democracy is at risk,” Congressman Hank Johnson, a Democrat in Georgia, said. “We must save this supreme court from itself, and that’s why it’s so important that we do court reform now.”Confidence in supreme court plummetsThe combination of contentious rulings and dubious ethical behavior has culminated in plummeting ratings in that other all-powerful court: the court of public opinion.Gallup has yet to release its latest poll in the wake of the slew of recent ethics scandals and aggressive decisions released in the final days of the 2022-23 term. But the historic trend of its surveys gives a clear picture. In 2001, under Chief Justice William Rehnquist, 62% of Americans approved of the way the supreme court handled its job, according to Gallup; by last September that had fallen to just 40%.Such a profound dip in popularity has ushered in a proportionate rise in demands for reform, ranging from calls for ethical guardrails for the justices to proposals for a radical makeover of the court’s structure and size. One Economist/YouGov poll taken in April found that 69% of Americans support an ethics code for supreme court justices. Another AP-NORC poll taken last year showed 67% of Americans back term limits for the justices, and a Marquette Law school survey released last September found that 51% of Americans agree with calls to expand the court.Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a non-partisan group which advocates for reform, said that a growing perception that the conservative justices are acting more as politicians than as judges was driving the calls for change.“I’ve been beating this drum for almost 10 years, and it is definitely getting louder. The series of recent events have left no doubt today that the supreme court is a political body, and it is only rational to want the justices to have to follow the same ethical rules that politicians follow.”As things currently stand, the nine supreme court justices are the only judges in the country – including both state and federal – who are not bound by any formal ethics code. The justices remain essentially unbeholden to any higher power.In April, the current chief justice, John Roberts, refused to appear before the Senate judiciary committee to discuss the ProPublica revelations about Thomas’s luxury holidays courtesy of the billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow. Roberts insisted that he and his fellow justices “consult a wide variety of authorities to address specific ethical issues” – without addressing the main problem with that argument: that such consultations are entirely voluntary and self-policing.Ethics groups like Fix the Court have despaired of Roberts taking a lead on ethics reform, and are now pleading with Congress to force the issue. Roth said the current malaise was so profound it had gone beyond merely extending the existing code of ethics that, since 1973, has applied to all other federal judges.Now, he said, it had to be enforceable, with “a mechanism for reprimand when there are violations”. “There needs to be a more strict rubric telling justices what they can and cannot do when it comes to flying around on billionaires’ planes or staying in their luxury resorts,” he added.Requiring the justices to abide by clear ethical boundaries might clean up some of the grubbier optics but it would not get to the substantive problem that progressive critics have levelled at the court – its ultra-conservative rulings. “Right now we have nine kings, who can set policy for eternity – their rulings cannot be undone in constitutional cases by the president or Congress,” said Caroline Fredrickson, a law professor at Georgetown University.Like Roth, Fredrickson has observed a sea-change in attitudes towards reforming the nation’s most powerful court. “Five years ago, this was a discussion more for academics than for activists. I don’t think that’s true any more – we’ve had a series of decisions that have finally brought the American public to recognize that the court is out of control.”Fredrickson was one of a bipartisan group of 36 legal and other scholars who Joe Biden invited in April 2021 to form a presidential commission on supreme court reform. One of the key proposals that the commissioners analysed was the idea of expanding the court from its current nine members in order to rebalance the court in tune with the will of most Americans.The commission’s final report points out that Congress has made changes to the size of the court since as early as 1801. The current nine has been set since 1869, but there is no reason that Congress could not change that number through simple statute.Commissioners were divided on the subject of expansion. Some argued that adding seats was essential to make the court relevant again and prevent the erosion of democracy, while others feared it would undermine the supreme court’s independence and legitimacy.Fredrickson comes firmly down on the side of expansion. “The only realistic option for protecting our democracy is to expand the number of justices, which would allow the appointment of justices with a firmer grasp of the need to be properly deferential to the elected branches,” she said.Aligned to the question of how many justices sit on the court is the issue of their longevity in the position. The US constitution says that federal judges should hold their office “during good behavior” – a phrase that has been interpreted as meaning for their lifetimes.A new report from the Brennan Center spells out how life tenure has led to increasingly long terms, and with it an increasingly undemocratic court. For the first 180 years of US history, the average service for supreme court justices was 15 years; today that has risen to 26 years and the current crop could serve on average 35 years.With long terms has come a democratically skewed judicial panel. Since the presidency of George HW Bush, Republicans have won four out of nine presidential elections – only two prevailing in the popular vote – yet they have appointed six out of today’s nine justices.The Brennan Center recommends a new interpretation of “during good behavior”. Justices continue to serve for life, but after 18 years of actively judging cases they step back into a more supporting role – a “senior” status that has been applied to lower court judges for more than 100 years.Under Brennan’s formula, that would be coupled with regular appointments to the bench made every two years, so that each president would have two appointments per four-year term. That could instantly put an end to the ugly hyper-partisan infighting and obstructionism that saw the Republican Senate block Merrick Garland’s appointment by Barack Obama in 2016.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut many progressive activists argue term limits alone will not provide an immediate remedy to their concerns. They accuse Republicans of having “stolen” the court by refusing to consider Garland’s nomination and then fast-tracking the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett days before Biden won the 2020 election. One academic study concluded that, barring congressional intervention, the supreme court may not see a liberal majority until 2065.“Even if you passed a term limits bill with a code of ethics, it wouldn’t do much to put a dent into what is right now a Republican supermajority,” said Brian Fallon, executive director of the progressive group Demand Justice. “If you want to restore balance to the court, if you believe that the Republicans arrived at this six-three supermajority through illicit means, then court expansion becomes necessary to achieve balance anytime soon.”Political momentum builds for court reformAs Americans continue to reel from the court’s decision last year to overturn Roe v Wade, terminating federal protections for abortion access, the reproductive rights groups NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood have both come out in favor of court expansion.“We’ve known for a long time that reproductive rights and freedom are completely intertwined with the supreme court,” Naral’s president, Mini Timmaraju, nsaid. “We’ve become really clear-eyed that it’s not responsible for us to be an organization that promotes and advocates for advancement of reproductive freedom without engaging seriously in discussions around the court.”Naral was one of dozens of groups to sign on to the “Just Majority” project, which held events across the country this spring to advocate for court reform. The campaign included a diverse array of leaders from across the progressive movement, including racial justice organizations such as Color of Change and gun safety groups like Newtown Action Alliance.“We have to start coming to terms with just how much of a democracy we still don’t have,” said Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change. “We have an unelected, unaccountable, corrupt body of people that stand in the way of democracy, stand in the way of justice and stand in the way of the will of the people.”To advance their court reform efforts, groups like Demand Justice followed the playbook of activists who lobbied against the Senate filibuster. By convincing more progressive groups to sign on to the campaign, court reform advocates have been able to persuade more Democratic lawmakers as well.Russ Feingold, a former Democratic senator of Wisconsin who served on the judiciary committee, counts himself among the converted. Feingold, now the president of the American Constitution Society, said he was uncomfortable with the idea of term limits or court expansion as recently as a couple of years ago.He said: “People who have been much more cautious about this in the past have come to the conclusion that, if you simply allow this kind of a situation to continue for the next 20 years or so, with justices who are very ideological, very political and also in some cases unethical, then you are allowing a whole generation or more to be locked away from having a legitimate impact on the law.”Some of Feingold’s former congressional colleagues have adopted the same mindset. In the House, Johnson has introduced a suite of bills aimed at overhauling the court through adopting a robust code of ethics, establishing term limits and adding four justices to the bench. One of Johnson’s progressive colleagues, congressman Ro Khanna of California, reintroduced his own term limit proposal last week in response to the dismantling of Biden’s student debt relief program.Asked about the possibility of expanding the court, Khanna told the Guardian: “I think everything has to be on the table, but I think the supreme court term limits is the most likely and where we should focus our energy.”But Johnson, like Fallon, takes an “all of the above” approach to reforming the court. “We need to do both,” Johnson said. “We need to unpack this court, and we need to expand this court because that will help us right now.”Even as more Democratic lawmakers have endorsed court reform, the leader of their party has remained notably quiet. During the 2020 campaign, Biden shied away from backing court expansion, and progressive activists viewed his formation of the commission to study reform proposals as a “punt”.Still, even a longtime institutionalist like Biden has had his faith in the court tested. After the conservative majority issued its decision ending affirmative action, Biden described the current court as “not normal”. He later told MSNBC that this court has “done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history”.Fallon believes the president will be “the last domino to fall” in backing court reform. But Fallon predicted Biden’s endorsement of court reform will become “inevitable” in response to growing public outrage“You can’t hide your head in the sand,” Feingold said. “When the court’s been stolen, when it’s been politicized, when it has the worst ethics reputation it’s had in memory, then unusual measures have to be taken – not to recapture the court for the other side of the political agenda, but to restore the legitimacy of the court.” More

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      Key Democrat attacks US supreme court chief justice over ethics scandal

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      The chair of the Senate judiciary committee has launched a new attack on the chief justice of the US supreme court, promising a vote on ethics reform legislation after a term beset by scandal over relationships between rightwing justices and wealthy donors and featuring a string of controversial rulings.“The highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards,” Democrat Dick Durbin said.In a Thursday statement, Durbin added: “‘God save the United States and this honourable court!’ These are the words spoken by the marshal when she gavels the supreme court into session. But many questions remain at the end of the court’s latest term regarding its reputation, credibility, and ‘honourable’ status.”“I’m sorry to see Chief Justice [John] Roberts end the term without taking action on the ethical issues plaguing the court – all while the court handed down decisions that dismantled longstanding precedents and the progress our country has made over generations.”Roberts has refused to testify in Congress regarding reports of alleged ethics breaches concerning justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.Thomas’s relationship with the conservative donor Harlan Crow, including gifts, luxury travel, real-estate purchases and school fee payments, has been reported by ProPublica.ProPublica also reported on Alito’s relationship with Paul Singer, a conservative billionaire.And Politico reported a property sale involving Gorsuch and the chief executive of a prominent law firm.All three justices failed to declare such gifts or transactions. All deny wrongdoing. The donors and the chief executive denied discussing politics with justices or seeking to influence business before the court.The scandals have fueled calls for reform or, particularly in the case of Thomas, more drastic measures that might also restore some form of ideological balance to a court that was tilted right, with a 6-3 conservative supermajority, under the presidency of Donald Trump.But Thomas’s removal, whether by resignation or impeachment, remains a political non-starter in Washington.Three momentous rulings late in the now-concluded term – those which Durbin said “dismantled longstanding precedents and … progress” – have helped turn up the political heat from Democrats and the left.Rightwing justices used their majority to strike down race-conscious affirmative action in higher education; rule that LGBTQ+ Americans could be discriminated against by some business owners on grounds of religious belief; and ruled Joe Biden’s student loan relief plan unconstitutional.Durbin said: “The highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards.” He has pledged ethics reform legislation and said: “An announcement on the timing of this vote will be made early next week.”In May, Roberts turned down an invitation to testify to the committee regarding ethics reform and, although supreme court justices are notionally subject to the same ethics rules as other federal justices, in practice they govern themselves.The court’s public trust and approval ratings have reached historic lows.Durbin said on Thursday: “Since the chief justice has refused to act, the judiciary committee must.” More

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      How do Democrats fight back against the US supreme court? – podcast

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      As the dust settled on last week’s judgments from the conservative-led bench, progressives voiced their anger at what they see as a lack of determination from the Biden administration to counteract the supreme court and its most extreme decisions.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan about what progressives want Joe Biden to do now

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      North Carolina voting rights ‘still in five-alarm fire’ despite supreme court ruling

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      The US supreme court ruled in favor of North Carolina voting rights groups last week, which celebrated with one breath and with the next condemned the new election laws and political maps being pushed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature.“We are still in a five-alarm fire here in North Carolina,” said Gino Nuzzolillo, campaign manager for the state’s Common Cause branch, which was one of the plaintiffs that won in the case the supreme court ruled on.North Carolina Republicans, including Tim Moore, the speaker of the state’s house of representatives whose name is on the case, Moore v Harper, had asked the supreme court to take up a highly controversial legal theory that would have given him and legislators around the country immense power over setting state-level federal election laws.Even though the high court rejected that theory in a 6-3 vote, preventing a nationwide shift in checks and balances over writing election laws, North Carolina’s Republican legislators can already act largely unchecked by the other branches of state government. They have a veto-proof supermajority in the state legislature and the now Republican-controlled state supreme court signaled it would not act as a check on legislative power, including by taking the rare step to reverse two recent decisions by the previously Democrat-controlled court to re-allow partisan gerrymandering and require voter ID.Moore v Harper originated in state court as a partisan gerrymandering case, and as part of that litigation state courts put temporary maps in place for the 2022 elections. In a statement about the supreme court decision, Moore confirmed that the legislature will draw new maps.“We will continue to move forward with the redistricting process later this year,” Moore said.North Carolina is the only state where the governor cannot veto election maps drawn by the legislature, meaning that not even split-party leadership of the executive and legislative branches is a check on gerrymandering.For voting rights groups in North Carolina, this political reality makes the supreme court’s other voting rights decision this term that much more important. In Allen v Milligan, a case out of Alabama, the court rejected arguments from Republicans to do away with another part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This leaves an open lane to sue in federal court to overturn maps that dilute the voting power of racial minorities.Even with the victories in these two cases, federal judicial protections for voting rights are still the weakest they’ve been since at least 2013, when the supreme court crippled the Voting Rights Act. Still, voting rights groups are celebrating these two rulings because they preserve what legal tools are left at the federal level to protect the significant gains in voting access and fair representation since the civil rights era.What’s nextMoore and his Republican colleagues are working on three election bills, which they have enough votes to pass and overturn a likely veto from the Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, as long as no Republicans defect.S747 is an omnibus election bill that would make wide-ranging changes to voter access, including requiring all same-day registration voters to cast provisional ballots and changing the deadline for mail ballots.S749 would change the structure and powers of state and county boards of elections, making them deadlocked between parties, rather than having a majority vote favoring the party in control of the governor’s mansion, as it is now.H772 would change rules around poll observers, including the possible criminalization of elections officials who are found to interfere with observers.In the fall, the legislature will turn its attention to redistricting maps for seats in the US House of Representatives. North Carolina is a purple state, currently controlled by a Democratic governor but with a Republican supermajority in the legislature. Under the current map, North Carolina sent seven Democrats and seven Republicans to Congress.The redrawn map this fall will probably look similar to the map Republicans first proposed in 2021, which would likely have given Republicans a 10-4 advantage, according to Western Carolina University political science professor Chris Cooper. He testified as an expert witness for Common Cause in state court that the congressional map, as well as the state map’s counterparts, were partisan gerrymanders.He anticipates that Democratic representatives Jeff Jackson, Kathy Manning and Wiley Nickel will have their districts redrawn to favor Republican candidates.Leaders from Common Cause and the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters, both groups that sued the state and won in the Moore v Harper case, said they oppose all three bills and will oppose redistricting that dilutes the votes of political or minority groups.Public polling by the Associated Press showed that a majority of people in both parties see gerrymandering as a major problem, and research shows it is a key driver of political polarization and protecting politically extreme candidates.Neither Moore nor Ralph Hise, chair of the state senate’s redistricting and elections committee, responded to emailed questions about how the public can participate in legislative action around the election bills or redistricting, about whether the legislature will consider racial data for redistricting or about limiting partisan bias in drawing maps.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn 2021, North Carolina Republicans wrote rules that they could not consider racial data when drawing political maps. At the time, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ), whose attorneys represented Common Cause in the Moore litigation, argued they should have used racial data for fair representation.In light of the Allen v Milligan ruling, the coalition’s senior voting rights lawyer, Hilary Harris Klein, said the legislature will have to consider racial data this time or be in violation of federal law.Using racial data, or not, will be a key point in the development of possible federal litigation to challenge discriminatory maps. Klein stressed that the SCSJ will advocate for equitable maps during the drawing process because the organization does not want to resort to litigation.Weakness of democratic institutionsNorth Carolina Republicans have a long history of passing racially and politically discriminatory voting maps and election laws, according to several federal and state court judgments since 2013.Since 2016, voting rights groups have been able to turn back some of those laws with a Democratic-majority state supreme court. But as of 2022, Republicans control the court, and will at least until 2028.“The state courts are probably a closed avenue to any further vindication of voter’s rights under the state constitution,” Nuzzolillo said.Relying on federal courts has been made increasingly difficult by the US supreme court under its chief justice, John Roberts.“The court in the last 10 years has done extraordinary damage to democratic institutions,” said Carolyn Shapiro, professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. She wrote a brief to the supreme court in the Moore v Harper case supporting the voting rights groups.She points to the 2013 Shelby county decision, in which Roberts wrote the opinion to strike down the preclearance section of the Voting Rights Act and allowed states to immediately pass laws aimed at voter suppression. In the Abbott v Perez and Rucho v Common Cause cases from 2018, the court made it harder to win racial gerrymandering cases and impossible to bring political gerrymandering cases in federal courts. Then, in 2021, in Brnovich v DNC, the court made it harder to bring vote denial claims, which are the claims voting rights groups could try to bring against the election laws that North Carolina’s legislature is currently considering.The reason voting rights groups saw this year’s rulings as huge victories was because expectations were so low, Shapiro said.That Moore v Harper and Allen v Milligan were even taken up is an aberration from the historically typical strategy of the supreme court, showing how far the court and political thinking has shifted, according to Rick Su, a law professor at the University of North Carolina.The rulings mainly kept precedent in place rather than adding any rights or protections, Su said. That responsibility would fall to Congress.“We held the line,” Klein said. “In this climate, that is a huge win.” More

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      Supreme court’s student loan decision ‘usurps Congress’s authority,’ says Democrat

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      The US supreme court’s decision to strike down Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan late last week “usurped the authority of Congress”, Democratic House representative Ro Khanna said on Sunday.Khanna, of California, argued that if anyone thought Biden was unduly empowered by the legislation which the president used to issue the debt relief program, “then the solution is Congress can repeal the … act”.Chief justice John Roberts and his colleagues on the supreme court “shouldn’t be overturning the will of Congress just because they think Congress gave too much power to the president,” Khanna said on Sunday on ABC’s This Week.The show’s host, Jonathan Karl, pushed back on Khanna’s stance. Karl played a clip in which former US House speaker Nancy Pelosi – Khanna’s fellow California Democrat – asserted that a president could delay debt repayment but not entirely, single-handedly forgive it.In fact, Karl said, the supreme court quoted Pelosi’s words in the decision that doomed the student debt relief program put forth by Biden.Khanna countered by saying that, after Pelosi’s remarks, the Biden administration solicited a legal analysis of the 2003 Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (Heroes) Act on which the president based his debt forgiveness program.After that analysis, Biden’s staff concluded that the Heroes Act – which enables the government to provide relief to student borrowers amid a national emergency – gave the president authority to cancel or amend the loans in question, Khanna said.The progressive congressman added that he could understand arguments that the Heroes Act – which was passed about two years after the September 11 terrorist attacks – “was way too broad”. But that argument should be advanced in Congress – “it is not for unelected justices to override” federal lawmakers who were chosen by voters, Khanna said.“That’s what this court is doing,” Khanna continued. “It’s very dangerous. They are basically reinterpreting congressional statute to fit their ideological preconceptions.”Khanna’s remarks came days after he spoke to the Guardian about his wish for an extension to an October deadline to resume payments for 40 million students affected by the debt forgiveness program’s defeat.During that interview, he also said the court’s decision to invalidate Biden’s debt forgiveness program proved the institution was “regressive” and in need of reform. Additionally, he pledged to accelerate efforts to pass a bill which would establish term limits for supreme court justices, who currently enjoy lifetime appointments.Three far-right justices on the supreme court – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – were appointed during Donald Trump’s presidency.Last week, the conservative supermajority which Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett help form also struck down affirmative action in college admission as well as a Colorado law that compelled entities to afford same-sex couples equal treatment, all about a year after the court eliminated the federal abortion rights established by the landmark Roe v Wade ruling in 1973.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA poll released on Sunday by This Week showed that 52% of Americans believed that supreme court justices ruled “mainly on the basis of their partisan political view rather than on the basis of the law”. That marked a significant increase from January 2022, when only 38% felt that way.However, the poll did show that a majority – 52% – of Americans approved of the decision ending affirmative action in colleges.Khanna said in the short term he would support Biden’s recently announced efforts to implement a new student debt relief plan through the Higher Education Act. That law was unaffected by the supreme court’s ruling involving the Heroes Act.Khanna also called on the president to block student loan interest from accruing beginning in the fall as well.“You have all of these students who have relied on a promise that they are going to have their student loans forgiven,” Khanna said on This Week. “This is a real hardship.”Khanna made clear that past personal experience partly explained his efforts.“I had to take out $150,000 of student loans,” Khanna said. “I’m fortunate now and been able to pay them off.” More