WASHINGTON (CN) — A group of House Democrats announced the creation of a new task force Wednesday which they say will work to advance legislation addressing what they have argued is political activism and ethical malfeasance on the Supreme Court.
“The Supreme Court has upset the delicate system of checks and balances on which our democracy once rested,” said Georgia Representative Hank Johnson, head of the Court Reform Now task force, during a news conference.
Johnson, who also serves as the Democratic ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee’s courts subpanel, argued that the high court has threatened the U.S. political system by “usurping both legislative and executive authority with activist decisions that disregard established precedent in order to achieve political results.”
Congressional Democrats have long chafed at the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative supermajority, cemented under former President Donald Trump.
Their complaints about the court’s recent spate of controversial decisions — such as the 2022 ruling in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization which overturned the constitutional right to an abortion — were strengthened last year after reports emerged that some justices had failed to report lavish vacations and other gifts paid for by wealthy conservative benefactors.
Senate Democrats have for months taken steps to clamp down on ethically dubious behavior at the Supreme Court. With Wednesday’s announcement, the House is now getting in on the action in a significant way.
Johnson was joined at the unveiling by several other House Democrats and a large group of advocates for Supreme Court reform, including representatives from Demand Justice and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin, a member of the new task force, said the group would “take a flashlight to the way our jurisprudence has been completely warped and distorted” by conservative political forces. He pointed in particular to the influence of the Federalist Society, a legal group founded by Leonard Leo, a judicial advocate implicated in reports of ethical misconduct among the justices.
“We’re going to fight to restore the Supreme Court’s integrity,” said Raskin, “and fight to recapture public confidence in the Supreme Court — but right now, it’s a serious threat to the continuing work of constitutional democracy.”
Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett pointed to the upshots of the Dobbs case in her home state as an example of the need for Supreme Court reform.
“Women in Republican extremist states like mine are being subjected to what amounts to medical torture, forced to endure terminal pregnancies until they’re on the brink of death,” said Crockett, alluding to draconian abortion bans enacted by Texas Governor Greg Abbott since the Dobbs decision.
“The court is supposed to deliver justice and legal clarity,” Crockett said. “How is any of this just?”
Johnson argued that Congress needs to take drastic legislative action to address what he called “judicial activism and legislating from the bench” on the high court. He thumped several progressive policies, such as a bill that would add four seats to the Supreme Court’s existing nine and separate legislation that would establish 18-year term limits for justices.
The Georgia Democrat also said his new task force would back the Supreme Court Ethics and Recusal, or SCERT, Act, penned by Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. If made law, the legislation would force the high court to develop a code of ethics with input from the public and would stand up an independent review board to consider ethics complaints against the justices.
The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the measure to the full chamber last summer amid a partisan slugfest. The bill has been on the upper chamber’s legislative calendar since September — but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has yet to bring the SCERT Act up for a vote.
Johnson told Courthouse News Wednesday that he believed the Senate was “on the trail” to push ahead with the bill.
“I think that it takes more time for legislation to pass … in the Senate than in the House,” he said, adding that Democrats also needed to wrest control of the lower chamber in November’s elections so they can bring their own Supreme Court legislation to the floor.
Although lawmakers have divulged little as to their support for Whitehouse’s legislation, some Senate Democrats in vulnerable seats have been persuaded to break with their colleagues on other judicial issues, such as White House court nominees.
Johnson acknowledged that delays in addressing the SCERT Act in the Senate could be related to political friction in the Democratic caucus but argued that the large group of advocates who were backing his task force demonstrated a public desire to reform the Supreme Court.
“I do think momentum for court reform is in our favor,” he said.
Asked whether he would seek Republican participation in efforts to address issues at the high court, Johnson said all the bills the task force supports are open to GOP co-sponsorship but added that he was not expecting much in the way of bipartisanship.
“They have the court that they want,” the Georgia Democrat said of his Republican colleagues. “I’m not optimistic that they have the political will to change what they have carefully constructed over the last 45 years or so.”
Republicans have long framed Democratic complaints about the Supreme Court as political smears aimed at discrediting justices who have handed down decisions they dislike. GOP lawmakers, such as South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, have argued Democrats want to “pack the court” with liberal justices to counteract that trend.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court last fall unveiled its first ever code of ethical conduct — the high court had previously not been subject to such standards. While lawmakers and judicial experts commended the move as a step in the right direction, they have complained that the new ethics code lacks an enforcement mechanism.
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