Democrat member of the “Squad,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, slammed the United States Supreme Court for what she referred to as an “abuse of power” on Sunday, after landmark decisions in the past week rejecting affirmative action and Biden’s student loan debt plan.
Ocasio-Cortez proposed subpoenas and impeachment be put into play to limit the power of the justices.
“The Supreme Court is far overreaching their authority,” said Ocasio-Cortez.
“And I believe, frankly, that we really need to be having conversations about judicial review as a check on the courts as well,” added Ocasio-Cortez.
In the past week, the Supreme Court issued the last decisions of this term, among them rejecting the use of race as a factor in admissions and ruling in favor of a Christian web designer who refuses to make wedding websites for same-sex couples because of religious beliefs. Additionally, the high court struck down President Joe Biden’s student loan cancellation plan.
Democrats have denounced the rulings as attacks on the left and the court as “illegitimate.”
“These are the types of rulings that signal a dangerous creep toward authoritarianism and centralization of power in the courts,” said Ocasio-Cortez Sunday.
“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,” said the representative.
Ocasio-Cortez has been a vocal proponent of limiting the court’s power and court-packing, going as far as to say that impeachment and subpoenas should be considered.
“And so I believe that if Chief Justice Roberts will not come before Congress for an investigation voluntarily, I believe that we should be considering subpoenas,” said the Democrat representative. “We should be considering investigations. We must pass much more binding and stringent ethics guidelines where we see members of the Supreme Court potentially breaking the law, as we saw in the refusal with Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from cases implicating his wife on Jan. 6.”
“There also must be impeachment on the table. We have a broad level of tools to deal with misconduct, overreach, and abuse of power, and the Supreme Court has not been receiving the adequate oversight necessary to preserve their own legitimacy,” continued Ocasio-Cortez. “And in the process, they themselves have been destroying the legitimacy of the court, which is profoundly dangerous for our entire democracy.”
Contrary to AOC, Biden says he is against expanding the court
Unlike Ocasio-Cortez, President Biden recently clarified his position against expanding the court during a Thursday interview. The president said progressive efforts to expand the Supreme Court would “politicize it maybe forever in a way that is not healthy.”
“And I think, look, I think maybe it’s just the optimist in me. I think that some of the court are beginning to realize their legitimacy is being questioned in ways that had not been questioned in the past,” continued AOC.
However, Ocasio-Cortez made headlines shortly after the Supreme Court ruled on affirmative action after she suggested the high court isn’t serious about its “ludicrous, ‘colorblindness’ claims” or else it would have “abolished” legacy admissions.
The representative shared her thoughts on the ruling on Twitter and noted that “70% of Harvard’s legacy applicants are white” and that the SCOTUS “didn’t touch that — which would have impacted them and their patrons.”
Many social media users were quick to call out the congresswoman and said the issue on of legacy admissions — the practice of giving preference to the children of alums — was not an issue before the court.
