AFSCME President Lee Saunders today issued a statement in support of President Joe Biden’s plan to reform the Supreme Court and ensure no president is above the law.
“Within a few short years, the Supreme Court has worked to undermine workers’ rights, dismantled reproductive freedom and given a president — current or former — criminal immunity for acts committed while in office,” Saunders said. “It is clear that the highest court in the land is failing to uphold our rights and safeguard our democracy.”
Biden’s plan, announced today in an opinion piece in the Washington Post, calls for “three bold reforms to restore trust and accountability to the court and our democracy.” They are:
- A constitutional amendment that would “make clear that there is no immunity for crimes a former president committed while in office.” It would be called the No One Is Above the Law Amendment.
- Term limits for Supreme Court justices. Biden wrote that he supports a system “in which the president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service on the Supreme Court.”
- A binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court. Biden’s plan calls for justices to be required to “disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.”
Here is a White House fact sheet on Biden’s reform proposals.
Biden cited the Supreme Court’s “dangerous and extreme decisions” overturning settled legal precedents, including Roe v. Wade, and the ethics scandals that have undermined public faith in the court as reasons for such reform.
“What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms,” wrote Biden, who as senator served as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “We now stand in a breach.”
Saunders said our union “will work to pass these vital proposals.”
“Term limits and an enforceable code of ethics will help ensure that the court is untainted by anti-democratic special interests and will restore confidence in its work,” Saunders said. “These important steps will help balance the scales of justice when workers are fighting for their rights.”