Less Noted, Just as Radical: The High Court’s Rightward Economic Shift

The Supreme Court and other federal courts have moved dramatically to the right on economic policy as well as social and democracy policy. It’s time to take on that fight too.

Last week, the Supreme Court’s 6–3, party-line decision in Louisiana v. Callais gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the law Congress enacted to stop politicians from drawing district maps that erase the political power of Black and brown voters. The ruling is the latest salvo in the Roberts court’s antidemocracy project. It is a partisan, ideological judicial campaign with a long paper trail that began with Citizens United, when the Roberts court opened the floodgates to corporate money in politics. Another important milestone in the court’s broader shift to the right was Trump v. United States, in which the court declared President Trump above the law by granting him immunity from criminal prosecution for “official” acts. 

The pro-democracy community is sounding the alarm that we desperately need judicial reforms. The reproductive rights and gun safety advocacy communities have also recognized this, in the wake of devastating losses when the Roberts court stripped women of rights to bodily autonomy and ordained that the Constitution effectively renders elected leaders powerless to stop school shootings.

One group, though, has been largely silent on the court’s direction and how to fight it. It is time for the progressive economic policy community to make court reform a “must do” governing priority for them too. No economic agenda is complete without a plan to fix the courts, because the same broken courts that are dismantling multiracial democracy are also a major structural obstacle to reining in corporate power and delivering economic relief for working Americans.

It’s not just that the Supreme Court is protecting President Trump. It is also standing in the way of any meaningful economic reform. Just like Chief Justice Roberts embarked on a decades-long crusade to dismantle the Voting Rights Act, under his leadership the court has also steadily worked to entrench our K-shaped economy. Citizens United........

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