Disclaimer: This is an opinion piece. The views reflected in this article are that of the author. EB Writers Coalition is not explicitly associated with the views presented in this article.
With the recent confirmation of Joe Biden’s election to President, one of the things that has come up a lot in his campaign is the term “court-packing,” which not everyone is familiar with.
The process of court packing starts in Congress, where a bill would need to be proposed and passed that would increase the amount of seats on the Supreme Court. This is within the rights of the Constitution, as the Constitution only outlines the fact that a Supreme Court is necessary, and not specific details like how many justices. The increase in size of the Supreme Court would allow for more justices, and would disrupt the current conservative majority.
Democrats and other left-leaning citizens want this to happen for a variety of reasons, most related to their concerns about the moral values of the current court.
Amy Coney Barrett is the most recent appointee to the Supreme Court, and is one of the judges that left-leaning people are most concerned about. She has been credited with saying several prejudiced things, one of which being her ruling for the dismissal of Smith vs. Illinois Department of Transportation. The details of this case were that Smith performed poorly at his job during his probationary employment period and was then fired, though Smith alleged that he had been called racial slurs by a supervisor and had filed racial discrimination complaints with HR. He believed that those complaints were the cause of his firing. Though the case had been dismissed earlier, in an opinion piece she had written on account of the board, Barrett claimed that being called the n-word, at least in this case, was not enough to claim a hostile work environment. This is not the only issue with Barrett. In addition, she believes in the death penalty, and disagreed with the majority of her court in several Indiana rulings that struck down restrictions for abortion laws.
Further fears are brought on by writing from two Justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who claim that the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges infringes on religious liberty. This 2015 decision gave LBGTQ+ people the right to get married federally under the 14th Amendment, and the reversal of this decision would lead to the banning and lack of recognition of gay marriages throughout the country. They claim to worry that the decision “enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots, making their religious liberty concerns that much easier to dismiss,” as Thomas said in his writing on behalf of both.
Though two of the nine members aren’t a majority of the court, the fear that more members are willing to reconsider this decision and cause a change is one of the ideas pushing people towards their support of court packing.
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Written by volunteer Jaiden Radoczy
Date published: 12/11/2020
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Sources:
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca7/18-2948/18-2948-2019-08-21.html
nytimes.com/2020/09/19/us/politics/what-is-court-packing.html
https://www.nytimes.com/article/amy-barrett-views-issues.html
https://naacp.org/latest/naacp-condemns-misrepresentation-by-amy-coney-barrett-on-racial-justice-ruling-calls-for-judiciary-committee-to-pursue-2/
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