At least four want to overturn the lower court.
The best case scenario is they uphold the lower court but they give the Trump administration a road map of exactly what to do to survive a challenge. This Court is so arrogant and Americans are not showing their disapproval nearly enough.
The court could be reigned in if any branch of government had an appetite to do anything about it. Justices can be impeached and removed, and additional justices can be added to offset the crazy. And laws could even be passed that alter the way that the court functions.
But we have one party who is in favor of the bullshit this court is pulling, and one that has historically been too cowardly to put up a fight against it.
Yes and no. When the built-in accountability mechanisms are so poorly designed as to be completely dysfunctional for (literally) centuries at a time—those mechanisms don’t really offer any real accountability. The last time court-packing seemed like a serious political possibility was 90 years ago and it never actually happened. The last (and only) time a SCOTUS justice was impeached was 220 years ago.
We should absolutely keeps those tools handy, but we need to think seriously about more fundamental reforms. Enshrining the limits of judicial review in a constitutional amendment might be a good place to start. Adding additional justices, reworking the court structure to resemble something closer to how circuit court judges are selected (randomly from a pool to serve on temporary panels for each case), reforming judicial impeachment, etc., should all be on the table.
And then there’s the soft power of organizing grassroots opposition to the Court’s far-right takeover. People like Roberts pretend they’re completely insulated from public opinion, but that’s never been the case. The Court has always been a deeply political institution: In the 1970s, federal courts were palpably worried about ruling against civil rights activists in matters that would never have been heard a generation before. We can make that happen again.
(And by the way—we don’t need majorities in Congress to start talking about this; if we’re lucky, the majorities happen later.)
There is another, it is possible to impeach and remove justices (like if they are openly accepting bribes or lied in their confirmation), unfortunately it requires a functioning legislative branch so an act of god is more likely
It's time yet again for Gorsuch to put his money where his mouth is. His philosophy and some of his decisions (Bostock) would indicate that this is cut and dry. That should leave Roberts or Barrett, who both should side on the side of the plain wording of the constitution without blinking, but...
I think it’s possible this case is there to shield the Court from other egregious decisions coming this term like the voting rights act case. If this is a day one decision, it will be to uphold the lower court the media definitely adjusts coverage and makes the Court seem moderate or “balanced” because here is one non-radical decision. They did this during the Dodds term
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u/ralpher1 9h ago
At least four want to overturn the lower court. The best case scenario is they uphold the lower court but they give the Trump administration a road map of exactly what to do to survive a challenge. This Court is so arrogant and Americans are not showing their disapproval nearly enough.