If Trump Replaces RBG, Congress Must Expand The Court
By Mondaire Jones
On February 13, 2016, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia passed away.
President Obama did what every President has done following a Supreme Court vacancy: he nominated a replacement, the eminently qualified Judge Merrick Garland of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
President Obama expected the Senate to do what it had done for every one of the 160 nominees to the Supreme Court before Judge Garland: hold hearings and deliberate on his fitness for the Supreme Court.
But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had other plans.
Just one hour after Justice Scalia’s death, McConnell vowed that the Senate would not even consider a replacement nominated by President Obama.
"The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” McConnell said at the time. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President."
At his bidding, the Republican-controlled Senate broke with centuries of precedent and refused to grant Judge Garland so much as a hearing.
That was 269 days before Election Day.
Yesterday, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away — just 46 days before the November 3rd Presidential Election.
Mitch McConnell has already promised to disregard his own precedent and ram through a replacement of Justice Ginsburg before the November election. That should confirm for the American people what many of us already knew: the Republican Party sees the Supreme Court as a partisan tool meant to serve its own political ends and further entrench the power of right-wing plutocrats.
If Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump ram through someone from Trump’s horrifying shortlist during this legislative session, the next Congress must respond by expanding the Supreme Court.
We cannot tie our hands with antiquated norms that the Republican Party has long since abandoned. We have too much to lose. A more equitable and just America -- one with economic fairness, a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, reproductive justice, workers’ rights, LGBTQ equality, racial justice, and an inclusive democracy -- hangs in the balance.
As America’s white supremacist President tries to install a 6-3 partisan, conservative majority on the Supreme Court, we cannot be immobile. We must fight. And Congress must do its part.
Congress’ power to act is as clear as day. Article III of the Constitution unambiguously grants the legislative branch the authority to adjust the composition of the judiciary, including the number of seats on the Supreme Court. In fact, Congress has already done this seven times in our nation’s history. In the next Congress, which I expect to join, my colleagues and I must be prepared to fight for the American people as doggedly as the GOP is fighting for the special interests and big corporations it represents. We must expand the Supreme Court to 13 seats, and allow President Biden to fill those vacancies.
If we sit back and watch as another seat on the Supreme Court is stolen from us, we resign ourselves to a generation’s worth of defeat at the hands of six people installed by a right-wing, minoritarian government. We owe it to ourselves and to the American people to fight that looming doomsday scenario with every tool at our disposal.
Mondaire Jones (@MondaireJones) is the Democratic nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives in New York's 17th District.