We need to talk about our courts, and the double standard for who gets real justice.
You may have heard that the South Carolina Supreme Court has overturned Alex Murdaugh's murder convictions — I have some thoughts.
If you haven’t been following the case (or watching the Netflix documentary series), here’s what you need to know:
Murdaugh is a wealthy, well-connected white attorney who was caught on video at the scene of his wife and son's murders. A jury of his peers convicted him, and a judge sentenced him to life in prison.
And now, he’s getting another trial.
Meanwhile, you and I both know that’s not what our justice system looks like for everyone else. Not for Black and brown Americans who are stopped, charged, convicted, and incarcerated at staggering rates for doing far less.
Not for immigrants swept up in ICE raids and held in detention facilities, unable to reach a lawyer.
And not for the countless voters whose fundamental rights are being eroded by a right-wing Supreme Court majority that’s clearly more interested in protecting power than delivering justice.
Just look at the total evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, delivered by SCOTUS last month: now, anyone challenging discriminatory maps must prove intentional discrimination, not just discriminatory effects. Just one hour after the ruling, the Florida House passed new, aggressively-gerrymandered maps. Other states are now following suit. Decades of progress undone in a single ruling.
And then in Virginia, the state Supreme Court actually threw out the results of the people's redistricting referendum — a direct rebuke of voters who stood up to Donald Trump and went to the ballot box to defend democracy and combat the GOP’s gerrymandering.
This is the Republican Party’s strategy: Use the courts to lock in their power before voters can step up to take it back.
Americans have been losing faith in our court system for years, and it’s no wonder why!
We need significant, structural reform to restore the legitimacy of our courts — before it’s too late.
I think everything should be on the table — like term limits for Supreme Court justices, so no president can shape the court for generations just by having lucky (or corrupt) timing. It could mean expanding the bench to 13 justices, or 15 justices with a rotational structure, all ideas that deserve to be discussed seriously and openly.
These are critical conversations we need to have as a country, because our court system has one set of rules for wealthy, white men clinging to power, and an entirely different set of rules for everyone else — and we can’t let it stay that way.
I want to know where you stand on this. If you support reforming the Supreme Court to restore its legitimacy and rebuild trust with the American people, will you add your name today to let me know?
