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John — today, I’m celebrating one of the most important anniversaries of Pride Month.
Nine years ago today, the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges recognizing marriage equality nationwide.
It’s a far cry from the Supreme Court’s far-right politics today — and proof that the Court can still be a lodestar for national progress if we have the will to make it so.
Generations of LGBTQIA+ activists struggled and sacrificed in the fight for equal rights and full recognition of their humanity by our government. Their efforts paid off with the Obergefell decision and blazed a path for our passage of the Respect for Marriage Act to codify marriage equality into federal law in 2022.
But Mitch McConnell made it his mission to remake the federal judiciary in Trump’s flawed image. When Justice Antonin Scalia passed and President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to fill his vacancy, McConnell denied Garland a hearing for almost an entire year.
When Trump won the 2016 election, McConnell and the Republican Senate were quick to confirm Neil Gorsuch in his place, followed by Brett Kavanaugh, and then in the final days of the 2020 election, as millions of votes had already been cast, and against the dying wish of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, McConnell hypocritically pushed through the confirmation of Trump’s third Supreme Court justice nominee, Amy Coney Barrett.
Trump and McConnell fundamentally changed the Supreme Court, and hard-line conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have grown more emboldened, political, and partisan than any justices in living memory.
Thomas has accepted millions of dollars in previously undisclosed gifts from wealthy megadonors with interests before the Supreme Court, while his wife coordinated with Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on January 6th.
The Alitos have publicly flown flags associated with QAnon and the MAGA insurrectionists.
But there is good news. Thanks to our defense of the Senate majority in 2022, President Biden is now outpacing Trump in filling the federal bench.
I believe we need to go even further — I have introduced legislation in the House and will champion the same in the Senate, to expand the Supreme Court from nine justices to thirteen, while imposing an enforceable code of ethics and term limits so that the youth of today do not have to live under the yoke of this far-right Court for decades to come.
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Days like this one nine years ago prove the promise and possibility of America. Let us recommit ourselves to fighting for the future we all deserve, one where equality and each person’s freedom and liberty are respected.
Thank you,
Adam
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