Advocates Call for “Power Back to The People” at United For Democracy Rally to Protest the Supreme Court’s Relentless Power Grab
Groups gathered at the Supreme Court to protest the Supreme Court’s relentless power grab and demand that Congress fix the Court as an urgent priority. Visuals from the rally can be found here, and video here.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Earlier today, United for Democracy – a coalition of 140+ state and national organizations calling on Congress to fix the broken Supreme Court — hosted its “Power Back to the People” rally on one of the final and most consequential days of the Court’s term. Protesters and advocacy groups joined forces to emphasize the urgency of fixing the Court after a range of decisions over the past week have spurred a historic power grab from MAGA justices to gut the federal government’s ability to make policy, enforce regulations, and guard the people it is tasked to protect – instead shifting power to one of the least democratic and most unaccountable institutions in our government: the nation’s highest court. Visuals from the rally can be found here, and video here.
This morning, the Supreme Court handed down decisions in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, Fischer v. United States, and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo – making it constitutional to punish homelessness, more difficult to hold insurrectionists accountable and, most worryingly, deferring federal agencies’ regulatory power to partisan judges. These decisions ignore decades of legal precedent in service of the wealthy billionaires who installed the MAGA justices on the Court.
“The MAGA-controlled Supreme Court just supercharged its relentless power grab and our communities nationwide will pay the price,” said Stasha Rhodes, Campaign Director for United for Democracy. “Today, even as justices sided with Jan. 6th rioters and condemned unhoused Americans for needing sleep, the Court’s MAGA majority essentially gutted the federal government’s ability to regulate. As a result of today’s decision, MAGA Justices on the Supreme Court will have the final say on whether medications are safe and effective, which environmental protections should be upheld, what the appropriate workplace safety standards are, and much more – even though they are lawyers, not doctors or scientists, or foremen. Our rights and freedoms are up for grabs in the courtroom now more than ever. Americans need elected officials in Congress who will fight back against the MAGA majority on the Court and stop them from taking away more of our rights than they already have.”
“It is no secret that there are major issues with today’s Supreme Court,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D- WA). “It is not just the scandal after scandal that we’ve seen, from upside down flags to luxury trips – they are legislating from the bench. They are subverting the will of the American people by going around Congress and the President to shape our laws and advance their own agendas. The right-wing Supreme Court has made a habit of putting powerful interests over the American people. Some of these justices are bought and paid for by the wealthiest people in this country, who are going before them in cases to overturn precedent that protects democracy and protects the rights of people across this country. They are rewriting the rules in favor of special interest to help the rich get richer and the powerful gain more power. All at the expense of the American people. Their naked partisanship and their obvious corruption has led them to losing legitimacy and the public trust. It's time for us to fix these issues and take action to restore confidence in the highest court in the land.”
“I grew up in the small town of Nitro, West Virginia, a town that's air, water, and soil were polluted by the numerous chemical companies operating there… And for decades, people got sick, many with cancer. Ironically, Justice Clarence Thomas worked as a lawyer for one of those companies up until the year I was born. Years later, I got cancer too. It was a type of cancer that is uncommon for my sex, race, age and health status, but is more prevalent in people who have been exposed to the chemicals that polluted my town. I am mostly healed and healthy now, but the prospect of this [Relentless] decision has been haunting me for months, said Christina Harvery, Executive DIrector of Stand Up America. “Today's decision leaves the door open for unqualified judges to undermine government experts trying to prevent tragedies like the one in Nitro, West Virginia. It will mean more diagnoses like mine, especially for poor and working-class Americans and people of color. The impact of these extreme rulings is personal for millions of Americans, and we’re not taking them sitting down.”
“SCOTUS has been taken over by people who just made a decision on Chevron that seeks to roll us back by 40 years. This is on brand for a Court who has already taken this nation back to pre-Civil War. When they speak of originalism and when they speak of the intent of the writers and authors of the Constitution, what they are saying is that they only wish to center wig-wearing, racist, people-owning white men,” said Analilia Mejia Co-Executive Director, Center for Popular Democracy. “By showing us their inhumanity, they're showing us that they are not fit to make decisions for us, to be part of the leadership for us. So what we must do for us is: Stand up. So you better call, you better write, you better go talk to your neighbors. You better stop that thing that says ‘we can't talk about politics because it's not polite,’ because our lives depend on it.”
“This time next month, the vast majority of abortions will be banned in Iowa. That happened today… That brings us to 22 states that have abortion bans in this country. Half of the Black women of reproductive age in this country live in states with no access to abortion. Whose fault is that? Trump and this Supreme Court. What happened in Iowa is a direct result of this Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade and of a decades-long effort by far-right interests to stack our judiciary,” said Jenny Lawson, Senior Vice President of Policy, Organizing, and Campaigns, Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “[And this Supreme Court] virtually guaranteed that our bodies will be back in this Court in the coming years, when they think it is more politically convenient. The Supreme Court is supposed to determine who has rights under our federal laws, but they aren't weighing in. This is supreme gaslighting. We are still living in the public health crisis caused by the Court and the attacks are going to keep coming at the expense of our bodies, our lives and our futures.”
“The Supreme Court might’ve thought that one favorable ruling in Rahimi would make us forget that a week earlier it legalized weapons of war that committed the worst mass shooting in American history. That a year ago, it eviscerated centuries of settled 2nd Amendment jurisprudence in Bruen. And that in the last two decades, its conservative majority has created a juggernaut of 2nd amendment rights that supersede our right to not be shot,” said Makennan McBryde, Legal Associate for March For Our Lives. “None of this is happening in a vacuum. This is part of a decades-long effort by the NRA, the Federalist Society, and extremists conservatives to expand the 2nd Amendment and put money over lives. Every radical decision from this Supreme Court is part of a generational crusade of right wing extremists who have sought to staff the court with sympathetic justices because they couldn’t win over the will of the American people. Reforming the Court will have direct effects on what Americans get to live and die.”
“We cannot have a healthy environment without a healthy democracy,” said Doug Lindner, Senior Director of Judiciary & Democracy for League of Conservation Voters. “Right now, big polluters are bankrolling a tax on our freedoms. The Supreme Court’s MAGA supermajority has worked on their behalf to overturn one of the most fundamental legal principles in all of American law. This case has been used to decide more cases in this country than any other decision. This touches every area of public policy. It touches every public agency across the federal government. It touches every American. It could mean dirtier air, dirtier water, harder for workers to organize, harder for students to get relief, harder for the Congress we vote for to protect us from corporate abuse. But at the end of the day, this Court is making it clear that this isn’t about law – this is about corrupt political actors making corrupt political decisions for corrupt political reasons. It is MAGA imperialism in a black robe. They will rule over us instead of the people deciding what kind of country we want to live in.”
“For years, the Supreme Court has operated as the legal department of the RNC. The only difference now is, the mask it once wore has started to slip,” said Sarah Lipton-Lubet, president of Take Back the Court Action Fund.” The Republicans on the court have stopped even pretending not to be political operatives; this term’s opinions are more brazenly partisan than ever. This court’s MAGA justices have one goal: to grab more power for themselves, their billionaire benefactors, and the narrow political faction they represent in order to impose their radical agenda on the rest of us. Our congressional leaders have the authority to stop this relentless assault on our rights and freedoms. It’s time they use it.”
“This is a crisis of this Court’s own making,” said Katie O’Connor, Director of Federal Abortion Policy at the National Women’s Law Center. “The Dobbs decision was reached for one reason, and one reason only – because the composition of the court had changed. In other words, Dobbs is a crystal clear example of just how political this Supreme Court has become. After they overturned Roe v. Wade, we are begging this court for scraps. And the scraps they gave us yesterday, they gave reluctantly, partially, and maybe only temporarily. This is how far we have fallen in just two short years.”