Following a string of far-reaching decisions by the US Supreme Court, Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has called out justices for “destroying the legitimacy of the court” amid a lack of oversight.
“The Supreme Court has not been receiving the adequate oversight necessary, in order to preserve their own legitimacy,” Ocasio-Cortez told CNN’s State of the Union. “And in the process, they themselves have been destroying the legitimacy of the court, which is profoundly dangerous for our entire democracy.”
Her comments come after the nation’s highest court released a series of conservative rulings striking down affirmative action in colleges (a process aimed at increasing diversity at universities), LGBTQ+ rights protections and President Biden’s student loan relief program.
All of this comes just over one year after the 6-3 conservative majority court overturned Roe v. Wade protection for abortion rights.
“These are the types of rulings that signal a dangerous creep towards authoritarianism and centralization of power in the court,” she said.
“In fact, we have members of the court themselves, with Justice Elena Kagan saying that the court is beginning to assume the power of a legislature right now.”
Citing recent allegations against Justice Samuel Alito over ethics improprieties, Ocasio-Cortez said that “Justice Alito accepted tens of thousands of dollars in lavish vacation gifts from a billionaire who lobbied to cancel the student loan forgiveness”, and then, “voted to overturn” the student loan relief program.
Another Justice on the conservative-majority court, Justice Clarence Thomas, has also had allegations of ethical misconduct, having gone on several undisclosed luxury trips at the invitation of a GOP mega donor. At the time of these allegations, Chief Justice John Roberts declined to testify at a hearing on Supreme Court ethics.
“If Chief Justice Roberts will not come before the Congress for an investigation voluntarily, I believe we should be considering subpoenas, we should be considering investigations, we should pass much more binding and stringent ethics guidelines,” said Ocasio-Cortez.
Ocasio-Cortez also called on the Biden administration to keep pursuing student loan cancellation after the Supreme Court blocked the president’s student loan forgiveness plan– a program aimed at delivering up to $20,000 of relief to millions of borrowers.