PPFA calls for judicial reforms
Term limits, court expansion among things organization wants
Planned Parenthood Federation of America issued a news release over the weekend that indicated the organization supported sweeping reforms of the judiciary, including term limits and court expansion.
These reforms had been supported rhetorically and publicly by many leaders within feminism and liberalism. Alexis McGill Johnson said the fight to strengthen democracy and bolster institutions was intertwined with the fight for reproductive freedom.
“As we continue to face unrelenting attacks on our basic freedoms, our courts must be one backstop to protecting our rights. Instead, the courts have been used as a vehicle to advance a dangerous agenda against abortion rights, voting rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and so much more. Planned Parenthood refuses to accept that our courts can only exist as they do now, and understands that reforms are integral to building the public’s trust that the courts can and will function to uphold hard-won freedoms and advance justice for future generations.
“PPFA’s expanded position is a continuation of our commitment to ensure that everyone, no matter where they live, has the freedom to make their own decisions about their own bodies, lives, and futures.”
The most controversial reform would be the expansion of the Supreme Court beyond the nine justices that currently sit there. The court hasn’t expanded in 150 years despite the population growing tenfold. As society becomes more litigious, even observers outside the reproductive rights movement must wonder how nine aging men and women could keep abreast of an entire country’s legal evolution and challenges.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt attempted to do this when many of his New Deal reforms were thwarted by a conservative group of justices known as the Four Horsemen. They were Justices Pierce Butler, James Clark McReynolds, George Sutherland, and Willis Van Devanter. They had voided many of his legislative efforts. Roosevelt proposed the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937. It would have allowed him to appoint up to six new judges for everyone that was over the age of 70. The effort was widely unpopular among the American public. But it did cause the court to start upholding the legality of his laws.
Another reform PPFA called for was term limits. Across the country, state legislators and reformers have sought to amend their constitutions to place age limits on state supreme court justices, typically having retirement age at 75. Most of these efforts at that level receive broad support from both Republicans and Democrats.
When it gets to the federal level, it becomes more challenging because of how polarized the debate is. If this were to work, then it would likely have to be phased in. Whoever is on the court now would have to serve out for however long they desired or until death. Then once they left, the new person would be subject to term limits whether they were Republican or Democrat. The reform would be linked to age and competence, and not abortion if that were the case.
They also call for judges to not be able to hold stock in publicly traded companies. That’s been central to a bipartisan effort in Congress to ban its members from holding stocks in companies that it’s supposed to regulate. Both Republican and Democratic politicians, and high-level leaders, had been calling for oversight of companies they were stakeholders in. In May 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act, which requires the online publication of financial disclosure reports of judicial officers (including Supreme Court Justices), bankruptcy judges, and magistrate judges.
I’ll be reporting more on this later as I speak to more people. But that’s an update for now.