Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) marked the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision — reversing 50 years of federal abortion protection granted by Roe v. Wade — by calling out the “most corrupt Supreme Court in US history” and charging those Justices for the moment “our rights were seized.”
Today marks two years since Dobbs.
Two years our rights were seized by the most corrupt Supreme Court in US history.
But we will have our day.
We will tell our story.
And we will have the right to choose – not just over our bodies, but at the ballot box too. #BidenHarris pic.twitter.com/aZg4v1MojH
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 24, 2024
When the Justices held 6-3 with the conservative majority all deciding to scuttle Roe, three of the six had been appointed in the previous presidential term by Donald Trump, who has since boasted about ending Roe.
The Supreme Court back then was facing the normal criticism about whether, due to its right-leaning makeup, it was able to accurately adjudicate for a diverse and fast-moving country.
Since then, however, revelations about undisclosed favors accepted by the justices — notably Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — from far-right influencers has changed the prevailing criticism of the court from its perhaps being out of nonpartisan balance to accusations of its being corrupt — or what Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has called a “captured” SCOTUS.
The abolition of Roe v. Wade was a priority of some of the groups that, through backchannels and personal favors, supplied trips and other gifts to the Justices who ultimately decided the issue.
Ocasio-Cortez also wrote “but we will have our day. We will tell our story,” signaling both a plan to codify reproductive rights into law and also initiatives she is working on with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) to hold the SCOTUS to higher ethical standards.
“It’s the highest court in the land with the lowest ethical standards, Raskin said in announcing the intent to pursue legal avenues to impose ethics restrictions on SCOTUS — and restore faith in the institution. “These are the only governmental officials in the land who are not governed by a binding ethics code. There’s no process by which we can hold any of them accountable.”