On Wednesday, the Trumpy Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act and handed Republicans a big, fat gift, even as the right-wing justices pretended otherwise. This could bring the U.S. back to the Jim Crow era.
“Republicans could ultimately eliminate a dozen Democratic congressional seats in the South as a result, leaving no Democratic representatives or majority-minority districts in states including Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Louisiana—the very places where voting discrimination has historically been most prevalent,” National Voting Rights Correspondent Ari Berman wrote for Mother Jones.
You don’t need a law degree to know that the Trump loyalists on the Supreme Court have put our democracy in serious peril. As much or more than Felon 47, himself.
In June, 2025, Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) introduced a legislative package designed to reform and shore up our democracy.
In addition to other important reforms to our political system, Casten's legislation cuts the ability of the current Supreme Court to act as political enablers for Trump or for a particular ideology.
As he explained in an editorial for The Hill, “One of the quickest ways to reduce the political influence of the existing court would be to take away their ability to decide which of the cases on which lower courts have already ruled could be considered for reversal.” Casten's plan would limit the Supreme Court to its “original jurisdiction,” i.e., matters relating to ambassadors and disputes where one of the states is a party.
The plan is to create a 13-judge multi-circuit panel to hear cases in which the U.S. or federal agency "is a party, cases concerning constitutional or statutory interpretation of federal law or cases clarifying the functions or actions of an executive order.” The judges would be randomly selected from each circuit and each would serve for only one year.
Perhaps the fastest and easiest reform was one Casten also outlined for The Hill: Congress using its “power of the purse” to make “a significant portion” of its funding “contingent on meaningful ethics reforms.” If Democrats take back the House of Representatives, as is expected, that could and should be at the top of their To-Do List.
Casten's suggestions sound great to me. But whether adopted in whole, in part or whether some other plan is put to work, Dems need to address SCOTUS reform ASAP.
