Reform the Supreme Court - Support the SCERT ACT & ROBE Act

The supreme court has once again proven they are no longer making decisions which are equitable and representative of the values which had been driving progress in our country.  We need accountability and term limits

Read on or click this link if you are ready to take action: How to Take Action

Government employees and officials from other branches such as Congress and the presidency are barred from using government resources for personal gain, but it seems some of our Supreme Court Justices are no longer concerned with what is right and ethical. 

These same people are undoing the progress we have made in addressing racial and ethnic imbalances by approving gerrymandering which promotes systemic marginalization while striking down efforts to minimize the same. 

Some of the worst examples include the following:

For more than two decades, Thomas accepted millions of dollars’ worth of luxury trips on private planes and “superyachts”, and vacations from his friend Crow without reporting them on financial disclosure forms, ProPublica reported. Crow has said that he did not attempt to influence Thomas politically or legally nor did he discuss pending supreme court cases. Thomas said he was told he was not required to disclose the trips. Notably, a company linked to Crow was involved in at least one case before the US supreme court, Bloomberg reported. Thomas did not recuse himself from the case.

Justice Samuel Alito reportedly took a private jet to an all-expenses-covered fishing trip to Alaska, paid for by the hedge fund billionaire and conservative mega-donor Paul Singer. NPR reports that Singer has been involved in 10 appeals to the supreme court. In an unprecedented move, Alito defended himself in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, declaring he did not have to recuse himself and followed what he “understood to be standard practice”.

Clarence Thomas’s friend Harlan Crow, the Texas Republican billionaire mega-donor, bought three properties that the conservative justice and his family owned, including Thomas’s childhood home in Savannah, Georgia, where Thomas’s mother still lives. Crow made significant renovations, cleared blight and let Thomas’s mother live there rent-free. The cost was more than $100,000 but was not disclosed. Crow has said the purchase was made to eventually turn the home into a museum for Thomas.

Justice Neil Gorsuch sold a 40-acre property he co-owned in rural Colorado after he became a justice, Politico reported. Brian Duffy, the chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, which has had more than 20 cases before the supreme court, bought the property in 2017. Gorsuch disclosed the sale and reportedly made between $250,000 and $500,000, but he left blank the buyer’s identity.

More details can be found in this article: What ethical controversies are US supreme court justices facing? 

Crow paid thousands of dollars in private school tuition for two boarding schools that Thomas’s great-nephew attended, ProPublica reported. The transaction was not disclosed.

An investigation by the Associated Press revealed how colleges and universities attract supreme court justices to campuses as a way to generate donations for institutions, raising ethical concerns around a court that, unlike other government agencies, does not have a formal code of conduct. The visits have resulted in all-expenses-paid teaching opportunities and book sales. 

The SCERT Act (Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act) would require the Supreme Court to adopt a binding and enforceable code of ethical conduct. 

Congress, the executive branch, all lower federal courts, and every state supreme court have ethics guardrails and a mechanism for enforcing ethics rules. It is time SCOTUS does as well so our ENTIRE PUBLIC is protected from being victimized by partisan appointments.

This act should also be improved to give states the power to compel enforcement and demand an issue be re-heard if a conflict is likely to have swayed a decision impacting state legislation. 

The ROBE Act (Reform of Bench Eligibility Act) is a proposed constitutional amendment to establish term limits for United States Supreme Court Justices. This act proposes the following 

• 18-Year Terms: Justices would serve a single 18-year term.
• Regular Appointments: A new seat would open every two years.
• Staggered System: The rotation ensures a regular, non-random change in the court's composition, reducing strategic retirement choices by justices seeking to match a president’s ideology.
• Senior Status: After 18 years, justices would move to "senior" status rather than leaving the federal judiciary entirely.
• Transition Plan: The ROBE Act specifically includes provisions for an orderly transition, applying to current justices.

Together, these proposed peices of legislation could help to ensure accountability and term limits in the supreme court and provide the public with avenues to justice when justices are compromised or become threats to democracy.