The right-wing Boomers who dominate the Supreme Court would like young people to get off America’s lawn, please, and thank you, and they’re using their vast, unchecked power to fence off our future.
America is changing in a way that scares Republicans. For years, the old saw about idealistic liberals aging into clear-eyed conservatives has been a political truism. Except that it’s no longer true. According to a Financial Times analysis, millennials are the least conservative generation at the 35-year-old age marker of any generation in recorded history and, unlike previous generations, they do not seem to be growing more conservative as they age. Early data suggests that Gen Z is likely to continue this trend.
Yet, the decisions being passed down by the Supreme Court are future-proofing the country against millennials, Gen Z, and generations to come. Last summer, the Court reshaped our country’s legal and political landscape by ripping away Americans’ right to abortion and bodily autonomy in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization — a decision met with disapproval by 69% of people under 30. Despite the uproar, that was only the beginning of the Court's crusade. From education equity to the environment, LGBTQ+ rights, and democratic participation, the conservative bloc of justices (average age, 62) is handing down decisions that restrict young Americans’ rights and freedoms — potentially for the rest of our lives.
Eroding access to education
Education ought to be the great equalizer that disconnects the circumstances of our birth from our future opportunities. Of course, our education system has never lived up to that ideal of equal access to opportunity. As we continue to grapple with the dark remnants of state-sanctioned segregation, the Court has jumped at the opportunity to roll back markers of progress toward educational equity.
The Court recently heard a pair of cases that aim to end affirmative action in higher education admissions processes. For more than 40 years, the Court has repeatedly held that race is a permissible consideration among multiple factors. But now it is poised to reverse precedent and overturn those rulings — with undoubtedly devastating consequences for racial diversity on college campuses and even in the workplace. At the very same time, the Court also threatens to destroy President Biden’s widely popular student debt relief plan this term and leave borrowers to struggle under the crushing weight of student loan debt.
Stripping protections on clean air and water
For young people, environmental destruction and climate change aren’t some frightening, abstract concepts for the future. They are imminent and extremely personal. An 18-year-old today will be just 45 in the year 2050. By then, we could see as many as 1.2 billion people displaced by climate change. More than half of young people already suffer from some form of climate change anxiety. It’s little surprise then that young people are increasingly at the forefront of climate activism.
Meanwhile, the current conservative Supreme Court justices — some of whom likely won’t live to see the worst impacts of the climate crisis unfold — remain hell-bent on environmental destruction. Last year, they eviscerated the Clean Air Act, hamstringing the EPA’s ability to regulate power plant emissions. This term, the Court gutted another 50-year-old climate safeguard: the Clean Water Act. In Sackett v. EPA, the Court issued a ruling that endangers the drinking water of 117 million Americans and half of America’s wetlands — a crucial safeguard against flooding and drought.
Pulling back on LGBTQ+ rights
The percentage of Americans who identify as LGBTQ+ has doubled in the last decade, including 1 in 5 Gen Z'ers. For many, thinking about LGBTQ+ rights and the Court brings to mind Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 landmark ruling that affirmed same-sex couples’ fundamental right to marry. After just eight years, however, much has changed.
Since the Obergefell decision, the Court has become newly entrenched in a 6-3 conservative supermajority and demonstrated an enthusiastic willingness to reverse watershed decisions — including agreeing to hear cases that could further marginalize LGBTQ+ people. In his Dobbs concurrence, Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly signaled a desire to revisit Obergefell.
That frightening peek behind the curtain prompted Congress to codify same-sex and interracial marriage protections. But even so, LGBTQ+ rights remain on the Court’s chopping block. Just this term, it heard arguments for 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, a case that could, depending on the scope of the ruling, open the floodgates to attacks on anti-discrimination statutes. Lorie Smith, a web designer in Colorado, brought the case requesting that the Court allow her to refuse same-sex couples seeking wedding web design services on the basis of her religious beliefs — even though she doesn’t currently provide that specific service. If the Court agrees with her, the ruling would weaken the strength of Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws.
Undermining democratic participation
Since 2000, the Court has assaulted voting rights and democratic institutions, particularly the Voting Rights Act (VRA). It’s probably no coincidence that these attacks came as the most racially and ethnically diverse generations in the country’s history — millennials and Gen Z — started casting their ballots.
In 2022, young people helped shatter expectations of a red wave in the midterms, influencing key races and favoring Democratic candidates by a 28-point margin with youth of color backing Democrats by even larger margins. A tidal wave generational shift is happening in US politics as young people solidify themselves as a decisive force in our elections and conservatives are highly motivated to stop it by restricting access to the ballot box, diluting voters’ power, and autonomously deciding whose votes actually count.
The Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder effectively eliminated the VRA’s Section 5 preclearance requirements that safeguarded the rights of people of color in areas of the country with a history of racist voting laws. At least 23 states enacted “newly restrictive statewide voter laws” in the five years after the Shelby decision. The Court has followed up with decision after decision defanging Section 2’s nationwide ban on racial discrimination in voting practices.
This term, the Court declined to further demolish Section 2 in Allen v. Milligan, but only after setting dangerous precedents that enabled judges to leave racist maps in place long enough for Republicans to seize 7-10 House seats in the 2022 midterms. Preserving the status quo in Allen cannot make up for the damage already done by the Court’s decade-long assault on the VRA. And Justice Thomas’s nearly 50-page dissent in Allen also makes it clear that diverse generations of young voters are not safe from the anti-democratic sledgehammer of this Court’s future rulings.
The current Republican Court majority is deserving of a great many pejoratives. Stupid is not one of them. They see where America is headed and they don’t like it. The rulings they are issuing now will lock in their own unpopular, regressive agenda for all who follow — for decades to come.
In response, we have only two choices: We can throw up our hands and accept a slide deeper and deeper into a juristocracy. Or we can fight back by restoring balance, integrity, and a belief in government of, by, and for the people to the nation’s highest Court by adding four new justices to the bench who genuinely care about our collective interest. Adding four justices would immediately neutralize the ill-gotten power of the Court’s conservative majority stolen by right-wing politicians during the Trump years. And the Judiciary Act has been introduced in Congress, which would do just that.
Congressional Republicans effectively shrunk the size of the Court to eight seats for more than a year by refusing to hold a hearing or a vote on Merrick Garland, then later abandoned their own rules to rush through Justice Barrett’s confirmation after 63 million people had already cast ballots in the election that would ultimately unseat Donald Trump. Without those two insidious moves, the Court would currently have a 5-4 moderate-liberal majority.
Until we rebalance and expand the Court by passing the Judiciary Act, other reform measures and legislation will remain at risk of being struck down by the Court. For ourselves and those who come after us, we cannot allow this rogue Court to continue to run off the rails.
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