Pressley, Ocasio-Cortez call for changes to the Supreme Court

House progressives are calling for changes to the Supreme Court following a slate of decisions affecting affirmative action, student debt cancellation and LGBTQ protections.

“The courts, if they were to proceed without any check on their power, without any balance on their power, then we will start to see an undemocratic and, frankly, dangerous authoritarian expansion of power in the Supreme Court,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Ocasio-Cortez has called for changes to the high court, including expanding the number of justices on the bench. In ending federal abortions rights last year, and landing a blow to LGBTQ protections in a decision out Friday, the court is signaling “a dangerous creep toward authoritarianism,” she said.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), another prominent House progressive, also slammed the Supreme Court’s recent rulings on Sunday, saying if the court were a caucus in Congress, would be the “bootstrapper forced to birth don't say gay caucus.”

“They continue to overturn the will of the majority of the people and to make history for all the wrong reasons, legislating from the bench and being political from the bench,” Pressley said during an interview on MSNBC’s “The Katie Phang Show.” “It is nothing but intersectional oppression,” she added.

Both members of Congress said that every option should be on the table when it comes reining in the court’s power and reforming its ethics.

“We should be considering subpoenas and investigations. We must pass much more binding and stringent ethics guidelines,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

“I think everything should be on the table,” Pressley said when asked whether she supports adding more seats to the nine-justice bench. “[Here's] a Supreme Court that has been emboldened in rolling back the hands of time, undermining and rolling back what should be fundamental civil human rights. So everything should be on the table: reform and expansion.”

Any bills to expand the court have little chance of passing in a divided Congress. And even if they do, President Joe Biden does not support the change. Doing so would be a “mistake” he said last week.