New Jersey congresswoman joins Just Majority to call for Supreme Court reform

During the third stop of a nationwide bus tour organized by a coalition of organizations under the name Just Majority that is pushing reform of the Supreme Court, progressives on Saturday called attention to corruption and partisan rulings on the court and pressed for sweeping changes to hold the justices accountable for the decisions they make.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey kicked off the event at Trenton City Hall, which she represents in the state’s 12th Congressional District.

“For decades, conservative Republicans and their powerful donors have worked to undermine democracy, and they’ve used the Supreme Court to accomplish it,” Coleman said during the Saturday event. “They’ve stolen Supreme Court seats and even lower seats, refusing to allow a democratically elected president to appoint judges and justices for the express purpose of bending the law to their will. They’ve overturned established law protecting women’s rights, workers’ rights, environmental rights and common sense gun control.”

Also present at the conference were Cecile Richards, a former president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Caroline Frederickson, a member of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court, created by President Joe Biden in 2021 to analyze the arguments for and against reform of the court. Coleman, Richards and Frederickson joined Just Majority for the New Jersey stop of a bus tour that organizers hope will spread their message across the country.

“We’re here today because the Supreme Court is no longer a source of justice in America,” Richards said. “Women have had their most fundamental freedoms stripped away by the Supreme Court, and frankly, we live in fear of what’s next.”

Richards argued the current court has become hopelessly partisan, and there are few other options other than to reform it.

“Despite their testimony during confirmation hearings reaffirming their support and respect for judicial precedent, five justices on the Supreme Court overturned nearly 50 years of the right to make our own decisions about pregnancy, a decision that is perhaps the most personal of any we make in our lifetime,” she said. 

Americans did not lose the right to abortion because it was no longer needed, Richards said, nor because of a change in public opinion; support for abortion access among Americans remains high. “We lost this right because five members of the Supreme Court — three put on by Donald Trump in the most partisan possible fashion — decided that their own politics, their own religious beliefs, were more important than the health and well-being of American women,” Richards said.

The level of danger posed by the court in its present form, the speakers said, is high.

“We need to restore balance to the Supreme Court, including expanding the court,” Richards said. “We need to restore integrity to the court by having a binding code of ethics. We need term limits. And this is not a tomorrow thing — this is a today thing. People’s lives are at stake, women’s lives are at stake, and the time to act is now.”

In July 2021, a year before the court handed down its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade‘s nearly half-century of precedent that the Constitution affirms a right to abortion, its approval rating sat at 49% among U.S. adults, with 44% disapproving, according to a Gallup poll.

In the months after the court’s decision in Dobbs, its approval rating declined further: As of September 2022, 40% of U.S. adults approved of the Supreme Court, while 58% disapproved, according to Gallup.

“The court is extreme — it is very extreme,” Coleman said. “It is out of touch with the American people. It is also painting itself as unaccountable.”

The speakers highlighted ethical lapses on the court, including revelations that Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts from a wealthy Republican donor and that Justice Neil Gorsuch had engaged in a real estate deal with the CEO of a major law firm with business before the court nine days after his confirmation.

“Obviously, right now, ethics reform is on everyone’s mind,” said Frederickson, who is also a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. “As both Cecile and Congresswoman Coleman have mentioned, a number of members of the Supreme Court have engaged in behavior that no member of Congress could behave in. Congress is held to a much higher standard in terms of receiving gifts, taking travel from wealthy donors, selling real estate to those who have an interest in front of your court. And unfortunately I could go on and on.”

Why is Just Majority’s push to reform the court happening now? Richards said things have come to a head in the nearly one year since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, sending decisions on abortion back to the states to make.

Richards told the American Independent Foundation:

I think that what we’re seeing now is not only Supreme Court decisions that are completely against the will of the American people, but also ongoing ethical concerns, and we’re dealing with a court that seems to think they are above the law. They don’t have to follow any of the normal rules that we expect of elected officials, and so I think it’s a growing crisis. We know that the American people have lost confidence in the court and that confidence continues to erode. And it’s going to be important going into this election for people to understand that their vote is directly related to what kind of judiciary we have.

Coleman remains hopeful that Just Majority’s push for court reform will continue to raise awareness and place pressure on Congress to act:

I live with hopefulness, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t do any work, and I know that in moments of crisis, people have come to the aid of their country. And I think that the more people are hearing, the more coverage that you see, the more revelations of improprieties, judge by judge by judge by judge, of the Supreme Court — people recognize that we have a problem.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.