NPI at Netroots Nation 2022: Talking SCOTUS reform with Sarah Lipton-Lubet

Wel­come to the fourth install­ment of NPI at Net­roots Nation 2022, a spe­cial lim­it­ed pod­cast series record­ed live from the David L. Lawrence Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Pitts­burgh. NPI staff jour­neyed to Steel City this past week to par­tic­i­pate in the nation’s largest annu­al gath­er­ing of pro­gres­sive activists.

As part of our con­fer­ence cov­er­age, we’re bring­ing you a series of con­ver­sa­tions with key move­ment lead­ers and elect­ed officials.

In this install­ment of NPI@NN, we’re hon­ored to be joined by Sarah Lip­ton-Lubet, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Take Back The Court Foun­da­tion. Press play below to lis­ten to the audio, or read the tran­script below.

Listen

Read the transcript

(Note: this tran­script has been edit­ed light­ly for clarity) 

CAYA: Wel­come to NPI at Net­roots Nation 2022, a spe­cial lim­it­ed pod­cast series from the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, record­ed live from the David L. Lawrence Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Pitts­burgh, Penn­syl­va­nia. I’m your host, Caya Berndt. We are glad to have you with us for this installment! 

We are excit­ed to be joined by exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Take Back The Court Foun­da­tion, Sarah Lip­ton-Lubet! How are you doing today? 

SARAH: Hi, it’s so great to be here! Thanks for talk­ing with me. 

CAYA: Thank you for join­ing us! So, for those of our lis­ten­ers who are not famil­iar with your orga­ni­za­tion, tell us about who you are and what you do. 

SARAH: So, Take Back The Court was found­ed four years ago, with the sole, laser-focus of Supreme Court expan­sion. That’s adding four jus­tices to the Supreme Court to stop the cri­sis that we have right now with the Court, where it has been over­tak­en by con­ser­v­a­tive forces that are dead set on impos­ing a right wing agen­da on the coun­try against our will.

CAYA: And how did you get involved in that work? What were some of the moments that led you into this type of work? 

SARAH: I love to talk about that because I’ve been a social jus­tice advo­cate in pub­lic inter­est work for about twen­ty years.… my entire career. And I have nev­er felt more hope­ful than when I was able to join the team at Take Back The Court, so we can fix the Supreme Court. Nev­er felt more hope­ful than when I was able to start work­ing on Supreme Court expan­sion at Take Back The Court, nev­er felt more energized. 

I’ve come out of the repro­duc­tive rights move­ment. I’ve been in abor­tion rights advo­ca­cy for almost my entire career, and I remem­ber the exact moment, actu­al­ly, that I decid­ed that I want­ed to do this work on Supreme Court reform, and on Supreme Court expan­sion in par­tic­u­lar. It was just over a year ago, last May, when the Supreme Court announced that it would be hear­ing the Dobbs case, the Mis­sis­sip­pi abor­tion case that it decid­ed recent­ly, in which it over­turned Roe v. Wade. But at the time, back in May of 2021, we were all, hon­est­ly, like real­ly stunned, that the Court decid­ed to take the case.

They had been sit­ting on it for months and months and months… some­thing like, I don’t know, nine months, some­thing like that? And the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom in the repro com­mu­ni­ty was, they’re not gonna take this case. They’re not gonna take this case. They’re gonna take some oth­er cas­es. They’re gonna do some real­ly, real­ly rot­ten things, but it’s gonna be more insid­i­ous. It’s gonna be on a slow­er pace, on a longer time­line. You know, more of that kind of chip­ping away of abor­tion rights that we’ve seen for decades now. 

And so, when I woke up that morn­ing and I was liv­ing out West at the time… it was very ear­ly in the morn­ing, I woke up to my phone buzzing off the hook, text after text. “Did you see what hap­pened? You see what they did?” And I was real­ly floored. That it was gonna hap­pen this quick­ly, that the right wing on the Court felt so empow­ered, so embold­ened, that it was gonna decide to take this case, to address the fun­da­men­tal rights in Roe, when it had­n’t even been asked by the lit­i­gants. I don’t wan­na get too, like, lawyery, wonky.…

CAYA: I mean, if you want to!

SARAH: I mean, some­times I want to, but not right now! But the way things usu­al­ly work is, there’s some­thing called “ques­tion pre­sent­ed,” right? So the lit­i­gants in a case, when they ask the Supreme Court to take it, they have to say: “What is at stake? Here’s the ques­tion we want the Supreme Court to answer.” And it was­n’t even in there! It was­n’t even in there. 

But the Court reached out and said, You know what? We’ve got six right wing jus­tices now. We’ve got Kavanaugh. We’ve got Amy Coney-Bar­rett. And we wan­na get rid of Roe, so we’re just gonna do it.

So, that day, I ran around, I did all the usu­al advo­ca­cy things I did at the time, you know, all of which were impor­tant… but at the end of the day, I just sat there and I thought, we are deal­ing with a dif­fer­ent ani­mal right now. 

We are deal­ing with a court that feels so embold­ened, and so empow­ered to enact this right wing agen­da that we’ve got­ta do some­thing dif­fer­ent. We can’t just do what we’ve always been doing. 

And let me be clear, all of the work that hap­pens in the abor­tion rights advo­ca­cy move­ment is so impor­tant, it is so crit­i­cal. I could­n’t pos­si­bly sup­port it more.

But it became clear to me then that part of my fight for abor­tion rights, for repro­duc­tive rights, had to be… to take the Supreme Court head on and stop treat­ing it like it’s some­thing untouch­able. Like it’s this kind of deity that exists out­side of time and space, and we mere mor­tals could­n’t pos­si­bly have any­thing to say about it. No, it’s a part of our gov­ern­ment. It’s a part of our democracy.

It’s an insti­tu­tion, actu­al­ly, the size of which has been changed sev­en times before in our his­to­ry, and we have to stop treat­ing it like it’s untouch­able! That was kind of the “aha!” moment about this issue, and six weeks lat­er I was lucky enough to join the team at Take Back the Court… and I’ve nev­er been happier. 

CAYA: I’m real­ly glad to hear that. And I love that sto­ry, because I love all of those moments that lead you up to that final moment where it’s like, you see the solu­tion and it feels so, so obvi­ous and clear to you.

Can you talk about what exact­ly the Take Back the Court foun­da­tion is advo­cat­ing for? I think you men­tioned four jus­tices – why the four? 

SARAH: That’s a great ques­tion. So, the way that our court sys­tem is set up, we have the Supreme Court, we have the Courts of Appeals – also called the cir­cuit courts – and then we have dis­trict courts, like the tri­al court, right. In this coun­try, there are thir­teen cir­cuit courts, thir­teen courts of appeal. 

The last time the size of the Supreme Court was changed was when there were nine cir­cuit courts. And so the num­ber used to match, right? The num­ber of seats in the Supreme Court with the num­ber of cir­cuit courts.

Well, the last time that was set, there was some­thing like – I don’t have my notes in front of me, so I’m gonna make up this num­ber – there’s some­thing like thir­ty-eight mil­lion peo­ple in the coun­try. Now, there’s some­thing three hun­dred plus mil­lion peo­ple in the coun­try. The coun­try’s changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

It’s grown dra­mat­i­cal­ly. The nature of our democ­ra­cy has changed to try at least to be a true, mul­tira­cial democ­ra­cy. Expand­ing the Court fits in with all of that, with grow­ing the num­ber of seats, of jus­tices, so that it is once again con­sis­tent with the num­ber of cir­cuit courts, adding jus­tices so that the court can be more reflec­tive of Amer­i­ca and the peo­ple that it’s sup­posed to serve, and, most impor­tant­ly, tak­ing pow­er away from the cur­rent right wing major­i­ty that is set on under­min­ing our democ­ra­cy in order to give them­selves more power. 

And that’s so impor­tant. There are a mil­lion rea­sons why court reform is impor­tant. But if we don’t take away pow­er from the folks on the Court right now, who are active­ly under­min­ing our democ­ra­cy, we’re not gonna have one left. That’s why this work is so crit­i­cal, and so urgent. 

CAYA: I’ve heard some con­cerns that expand­ing the Supreme Court is only a Band-Aid solu­tion to a greater Repub­li­can strat­e­gy of try­ing to pack the Supreme Court, and they say, well, if we just move it up to twelve [or thir­teen] jus­tices, what’s to stop them from throw­ing more con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices into those slots? How do you respond to argu­ments like that? 

SARAH: Look, Repub­li­cans have already changed the size of the Supreme Court. Right? They shrunk it to eight when they block­ad­ed Pres­i­dent Oba­ma from even hav­ing a hear­ing on Mer­rick Gar­land. And they did that with­out pass­ing prop­er leg­is­la­tion, which is what we’re try­ing to do with court expan­sion. I think it’s not unrea­son­able to ask what might Repub­li­cans do in the future, but Repub­li­cans are always going to try to enact pow­er grabs when they can. We’ve seen that. That’s just a fact of life. So I’m less con­cerned with what they might do in the future, than what we can do right now in order to fix the harm that they’ve caused. 

Right now, there are mil­lions of peo­ple in this coun­try who can­not seek abor­tion care in the states where they live. Right now, we have an epi­dem­ic of gun vio­lence that the Supreme Court has only made worse. 

Right now, we have a cli­mate cri­sis that the Court, in its deci­sions this term, has tried to pre­vent the gov­ern­ment from tak­ing action to cor­rect. There are so many crises on hand right now that this Court has cre­at­ed, and we have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to act to try to fix that harm, and what needs to be done. 

CAYA: And what needs to be done? Expand­ing the Supreme Court, there’s plen­ty of pes­simism around that, say­ing that’s some­thing that’s nev­er going to fly. Like, “Biden’s nev­er going to pass it,” or “it’s nev­er going to pass the Sen­ate.” What needs to be done in order to move such a big piece of leg­is­la­tion like that for­ward? And what is your orga­ni­za­tion doing to move that forward?

SARAH: I think the most impor­tant thing we can do, like all of us togeth­er, is keep talk­ing about it. It may be some­thing that not a lot of peo­ple have heard of. When Take Back the Court was found­ed four years ago, nobody was talk­ing about Supreme Court expan­sion. Nobody was think­ing about Supreme Court expan­sion. We were the first ones to step out there and say, look, this is some­thing that we can do to actu­al­ly fix this crisis.

It’s some­thing that’s been done before, and now is the time to take bold steps, and move that for­ward again. In just four years, we’ve gone from zero to more than 130 orga­ni­za­tions in sup­port of Supreme Court expansion! 

With that sup­port grow­ing every day, we’ve gone from zero to a bill in Con­gress that now has more than six­ty co-spon­sors across the House and Sen­ate. So in social jus­tice time, we’re mov­ing warp speed. 

We need to move faster, because the cri­sis is so urgent. 

And so I would say for your lis­ten­ers, if it’s some­thing they’re inter­est­ed in, if there’s some­thing that they want to get involved with, just hon­est­ly talk­ing to your friends about it, explain­ing this is a thing that’s actu­al­ly pos­si­ble that we can do… and we’ve found, once you break through that ini­tial edu­ca­tion bar­ri­er, peo­ple real­ly start to come to under­stand, very quick­ly, how impor­tant of a pol­i­cy change it is, and get on board.

CAYA: Thank you very much for that. So, just to wrap up our con­ver­sa­tion, a cou­ple more ques­tions for you: what are some resources and web­sites that our lis­ten­ers can vis­it, or any books that they can check out if they want to learn more about the orga­ni­za­tion, and about Supreme Court expansion? 

SARAH: Thank you so much. So absolute­ly, please vis­it takebackthecourtfoundation.org. We have prob­a­bly as many resources as you could pos­si­bly want, per­haps more. We like to write a lot! You can learn about the his­to­ry of court expan­sion, the fight for court expan­sion, and the way that court expan­sion is real­ly inte­gral to all sorts of pro­gres­sive fights and movements. 

If you care about abor­tion rights, you need to care about court expan­sion. If you care about cli­mate jus­tice, court expan­sion is gonna be real­ly piv­otal to being able to have pro­gres­sive leg­is­la­tion that is not struck down by the Supreme Court. 

If you care about vot­ing rights, if you care about gun vio­lence pre­ven­tion, immi­gra­tion rights – immi­grants’ rights, rather – we have resources that dis­cuss all of those. And if there’s a top­ic or a resource that you don’t see, reach out! Let us know. I’m sure it’s some­thing we might be hap­py to work on.

CAYA: Thank you very much. One final ques­tion for you, and this is some­thing I ask every­body to wrap up the inter­view… this has been a real­ly hard cou­ple of years. And this year, the past cou­ple of months since Dobbs, has been espe­cial­ly pun­ish­ing. With every­thing going on, what are some of the things that are bring­ing you joy right now? They can be big or small.

SARAH: It has been a real­ly, real­ly hard year, and a hard few months, absolute­ly, Year, real­ly, since the court allowed Texas to ban abor­tion in the sec­ond most pop­u­lous state in the coun­try while Roe still stood, and that was a year ago. So we’ve real­ly been in this. I have to say, what brings me joy is doing this work, and bring­ing oth­ers into this move­ment to make it stronger, and to grow it. 

And also it’s nice to go hik­ing sometimes.

CAYA: Oh yeah. Absolute­ly! And it’s looks like there’s real­ly good hik­ing around this area too. So it’s a good move, right? 

Thank you very much for join­ing us, Sarah. 

SARAH: Thanks so much for hav­ing me.

CAYA: And for our lis­ten­ers at home, this has been our con­ver­sa­tion with Sarah Lip­ton-Lubet! Look for­ward to our oth­er install­ments in our NPI at Net­roots series. I will drop the infor­ma­tion for her orga­ni­za­tion, Take Back the Court Foun­da­tion, in our post in the Cas­ca­dia Advocate. 

So, until next time, for NPI, I’m Caya Berndt.

For lis­ten­ers who are inter­est­ed in learn­ing more, you can vis­it the web­site for Take Back the Court Foun­da­tion by fol­low­ing this link.