Meagan Hatcher-Mays: After the Debate, the Urgency for Supreme Court Reform Takes Centerstage
By Meagan Hatcher-Mays
Last Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump met on the debate stage and laid out two starkly different visions for our future. In Harris, we saw a candidate who is fighting to move our country forward, protect our freedoms, and strengthen our democracy. In Trump, we saw a tragic would-be authoritarian desperate to retake power so he can impose his deeply unpopular and, frankly, creepy policies on everyday Americans.
Trump didn’t kick off the right-wing efforts to curtail and undercut our rights to representative government, to bodily autonomy, to clean air and water, and to safety on the job, but he certainly supercharged it—much to his corporate buddies’ delight. And if he is returned to office there is no question he will go further, with the full blessing and protection of the Supreme Court and the MAGA justices he installed on the bench.
It’s difficult to imagine a second Trump presidency as an American, but it gives me even more severe heartburn as a lawyer. In law school, I was taught that the Supreme Court was capable of administering “equal justice under the law,” and was worthy of my lawyerly respect, even if I disagreed with their more recent rulings. But take it from me: if the Court was ever that noble arbiter of justice, it certainly is not that anymore in 2024. Today’s Court has been captured by right-wing operatives and corporate billionaires whose handpicked justices have used their power to advance their unpopular agenda over the will of the people. Today, instead of being able to turn to the Court to fight injustice, we find ourselves fighting against the injustices unleashed by the Court.
During last Tuesday’s debate, Trump bragged about appointing three justices who helped dismantle Roe v. Wade—audaciously claiming that he “did a great service in doing it.” With those three justices, Trump locked in a MAGA supermajority that brought about the right’s true endgame: weaponizing the judiciary in service of an anti-democracy, anti-abortion, pro-corporate greed, pro-NRA agenda.
Trump’s MAGA justices have spent the last several years grabbing power away from the legislative and executive branches and giving themselves near-complete authority to legislate from the bench—upholding or overturning federal laws that they like or don’t like based on their own whims and the whims of the special interests who helped confirm them in the first place. That’s why Trump can stand on the debate stage and dodge the question of whether we would sign an abortion ban. Republicans in Congress will never have to pass legislation banning abortion, IVF, or birth control, and a second-term Trump would never have to sign those bills if sent to his desk. The Supreme Court can do their dirty work for them. That’s what they were appointed to do.
If Trump is returned to the White House, the MAGA movement will be able to enact Project 2025 without any fear of checks, balances, or accountability. The Supreme Court, Trump and Republicans in Congress and at the state level will work together to further restrict abortion, enact barriers to the ballot box, carry out mass deportations, and eliminate environmental protections.
Vice President Harris has a plan to protect our freedoms and build an economy that moves us forward. But without significant reforms, Trump’s Supreme Court can run roughshod over her agenda — invalidating laws passed by Congress and kneecapping federal agencies while handing more power over to the wealthy and big corporations.
There is only one path toward creating a Court built on fairness and its promise of justice, and it’s through the ballot box. While Supreme Court justices are not elected by the American people, they are appointed, confirmed, and accountable to the leaders we elect to Congress and the White House. That is our power.
The next president could appoint 2-4 new justices, and the Senators sworn in next year will be responsible for confirming them. A Harris presidency would guarantee more justices like Ketanji Brown Jackson, a level-headed and brilliant jurist who understands that the role of the Court is to protect ordinary people, not trade away their liberties in exchange for lavish trips and gifts.
America’s progress throughout the decades has been hard-fought and hard-won. We have seen, time and again, that we the people are the ones who make it happen. We carry their mantle, and like them we have taken to the street and the polls to make our voices heard. It is through our collective power that we have and will continue to unlock and secure our freedoms.
That’s why we can’t go back. We won’t go back.
We must vote for leaders who will fix the Supreme Court so it serves we, the people — not the elite few. In November, we won’t just decide the future of the presidency, we’ll decide the future of the Court as well. With our votes, we can reshape the judiciary, bring power back to the people, and reclaim our fundamental rights and freedoms.
Meagan Hatcher-Mays is a lawyer and democracy expert who serves as a Senior Advisor at United For Democracy. She was previously the director of democracy policy at Indivisible.
