The Supreme Court is broken & it's stopping us from fixing it

This week, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Louisiana v. Callais, delivering a fatal blow to the Voting Rights Act. That decision shows just how broken the Court is, as its decision was undoubtedly political. But more than that, it is also enabling redistricting that might prevent Democrats from ever getting a chance to fix the Supreme Court or the country.

In brief, the 6-3 decision ordered Louisiana to redraw its congressional map, originally drawn to ensure that African Americans had proportional representation in the House of Representatives. Championed by Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, the goal was to prevent their voices from being silenced by gerrymandering. The Court claimed that this itself was an “unconstitutional gerrymander.” In turn, this effectively removes the prohibition on race-based redistricting, allowing a return to districts gerrymandered to give more seats to those already in power.

The Supreme Court has done extensive damage to the country in recent years, particularly to the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, we saw the decision in United States v. Skrmetti, which upheld Tennessee’s gender-affirming care ban for minors. Earlier this year, in Chiles v. Salazar, the Court ruled against Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy, a practice that has been discredited by medical associations for the harm that it inflicts. Those two cases alone would be enough to be concerned, but they’re just a part of a big picture.

This voting rights decision is going to hurt everyone, as it takes away any recourse for voters whose votes will be rendered ineffective. That’s happening on the backdrop of Donald Trump’s continued efforts to make it harder to vote, which will disproportionately affect minorities, and while Republicans strip trans people of accurate ID that would be necessary to vote if Trump gets his way.

All of this will lead to the Republicans being able to consolidate power and push through more hateful bills in the future. The redistricting plan allows politicians to twist districts to get more Republicans to the House of Representatives and solidify the party’s power. That’s exactly what Texas has done, with a new map that the Supreme Court also allowed to go into effect earlier this week after a lower court blocked it.

Democrats are left in the position of having to choose between being left in the dust or participating in the same political games by redrawing maps for the states that they control, giving them more power rather than providing genuine representation for their constituents.

Not only does the decision hand a big win to Republicans who have been eager to redistrict racial minorities out of representation, but the timing also makes the crass political motivation behind the decision clear. While big decisions like this would normally be announced in June, this one was announced at the end of April. It’s hard to believe that the choice to do so was not motivated by a plan to give Republicans more time to redistrict their states ahead of the primaries in June and the midterms in November. Louisiana has postponed its primaries to give itself more time to redraw its maps.

Supreme Court justices are supposed to be nonpartisan. The Court is intended to interpret laws, consider precedents and intentions, and give a ruling based on that, but it is clear that politics has been motivating decisions. In this time of extreme political division, so many hot issues have come down to party-line votes within the Court that it’s obvious that partisanship and Trump’s influence are factoring into decisions to a significant degree.

Ultimately, this lays bare the true problem with the Supreme Court: a president or party should not be able to stack the highest court in the land to such an extent that their will becomes law. Especially when the power to appoint comes solely from which justices happen to die or resign during a president’s term (or before their term, but with a hostile Senate…)

Suggestions for fixing the Court have been thrown around for several years now. That’s included introducing term limits for the justices, different ways of appointing justices, or increasing the number of justices so that a single seat holds less sway.

The last of those solutions might have the best historical precedent behind it, as until the late-1800s, the number of justices on the Supreme Court fluctuated from six to ten. However, to increase the number of justices on the court would take an act of Congress (it doesn’t need a constitutional amendment since the Constitution doesn’t state how many justices should be appointed at once). But that means that a bill on the topic would have to pass the House, the Senate, and be signed by the president.

Right now, Republicans hold all three of those institutions. There have been suggestions that both the House and the Senate could gain Democratic majorities in November, even if the Senate is a long shot. If they could agree on a bill to expand the Supreme Court with provisions for picking the new justices fairly and imposing term limits, Trump could still refuse to sign it. That would then require a supermajority in the House and Senate to overrule. That would be a hard sell as it would almost certainly require some Republicans to get on board, but it might be doable, especially if Trump has started to lose his grip on power.

However, with the Callais decision, the Supreme Court has given new hope to Trump’s endeavors to scam his way into keeping the House Republican in November. If Democrats don’t manage to counter-redistrict their way to a majority, any hope to fix the Supreme Court wouldn’t just be a long shot, it would be a non-starter.

Having this Court continue to do such damage to the country for another two years until 2028 feels almost unthinkable.

If a Democrat can take the presidency, they could be in a good place to at least stem the bleeding that the Supreme Court is causing. If this blow to the Voting Rights Act and redistricting allow Republicans to stack the deck in their favor when it comes to the House, they could have a sizable majority there in perpetuity.

In that case, a Democratic president could have their hands tied from ever making any real change again.

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Originally published here.