Republicans across the country have engaged in an anti-democratic crusade, with a series of attacks limiting voting rights for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Of course, posturing oneself to power via manipulated elections has only one check to prevent anti-democratic victory: the courts.
Now, in tandem with their efforts to curb voting rights, Republicans in Wisconsin have attempted to twist and contort the makeup of court systems to favor conservative ideals. How are they doing this? By impeaching liberal justices who criticize the legal limitations and failures of their station.
In Wisconsin, a recent election over a Supreme Court seat garnered national attention because of the issues that were to be presented before a changing court. The seat would determine whether the court would have a liberal or conservative majority when ruling over cases related to redistricting, abortion rights and labor laws.
When Justice Janet Protasiewicz won the election in April, conservatives went to work scheming to maintain power. Now, they’ve come up with the solution: impeach dissenting justices.
What was Justice Protasiewicz’s crime? Vocalizing her concerns over the legality and fairness of Wisconsin’s electoral districts.
Unsurprisingly, they got this idea from North Carolina Republicans who are doing the exact same thing. Despite holding a conservative majority in the legislature and the courts, Republicans have considered engaging in an impeachment inquiry against Justice Anita Earls.
Earls, one of the few remaining liberal justices, a Black woman and a prominent civil rights lawyer, voiced her concerns about the racial makeup and possible implicit biases of some justices and their offices.
It should come as no surprise that Republicans want to control the makeup of the courts. It has been a staple of Republican politics since the Reagan administration.
It’s why Clarence Thomas was approved despite inflammatory claims that he sexually harassed Anita Hill, his former assistant at the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
It’s why Republicans blocked then-President Barack Obama’s federal judicial appointments, including the potential appointment of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, for nearly two years.
It’s why Trump appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, largely considered to be radical protegès of Justice Antonin Scalia, the brainchild of the reactionary political philosophy of originalism.
It’s why Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who faced serious claims of sexual assault before the Senate, was nonetheless approved.
But having a solidly conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court alone is not enough. Republicans have made a point to solidify their control over state legislatures since the Reagan administration, controlling 30 legislatures after the 2020 election at their peak and gerrymandering those states to cement said control over a large portion of them.
Now that they’ve done this, especially in North Carolina, the only people who can stop them are state Supreme Courts.
The N.C. GOP felt emboldened to push the independent state legislature theory in Moore v. Harper, despite the clear logical and anti-democratic nature of such a principle, to remove state courts’ ability to stop the anti-democratic actions of the GOP.
Now that the fight in Moore v. Harper has failed, the final option for the GOP to permanently establish its power, both in North Carolina and in other purple states like Wisconsin, is to control the makeup of the courts.
The first step is heavily investing in Supreme Court elections, as was seen in North Carolina in 2020 and most recently in Wisconsin earlier this year. This focus led to a sweep of the Supreme Court elections and a new conservative majority in North Carolina.
The next step is to remove the liberal justices that remain on the courts. And despite the fact that it is common for prospective state justices to give opinions on current events both before, during and after campaigns, Republicans have used their open dialogue as evidence of bias and unfair judicial activism worthy of impeachment.
When it comes to conservative justices, this standard is ignored. In fact, all standards of biases are ignored.
Just look at Justice Clarence Thomas, who took donations from billionaires to give his mother an opulent house and to go on all-expenses-paid yacht trips, and whose wife is an outspoken advocate of election denialism.
I wish I could give a solution, but I know this will fall to the pits of partisanship. Republicans know they will not win via popularity. Since 1992, Republicans have only won the presidential popular vote once. With fair maps and higher voter turnout, they lose.
All I can say is vote. If you care about your constitutional rights, vote. If you’re concerned about these developments, vote. If you care about preserving your voting rights, use them while you still have them. Anti-democratic sentiments are at an all-time high, and the only way to defeat them is with democracy.
