Planned Parenthood calls for Supreme Court expansion

by Olafimihan Oshin - 05/14/23 4:51 PM ET

Alexis McGill Johnson, the president and CEO of nonprofit organization Planned Parenthood, called for the expansion of the Supreme Court bench amid the ongoing revelations of ethics issues surrounding certain justices.

During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki,” McGill Johnson told host Jen Psaki that the reason why she’s calling for changes to the nation’s court system is due to recent attacks “on our democratic rights and our democratic freedoms”

“The reality is, the court now has been fully captured in so many areas. The fact that you have, again, this lone Texas judge, that can now bring cases, you can form shop there, bring cases to the Fifth Circuit, which is also conservative and up to the Supreme Court now, which has a conservative supermajority,” she said regarding the federal Texas judge who ruled in favor of taking a popular abortion medication off the market.

McGill Johnson also told Psaki that its time for the Supreme Court to expand the bench and implement term limits for justices, saying ethical reforms are needed and that issues surround “people with lifetime appointments, that are very much out of step with where the majority of people are on a variety of issues.”

“It would be one thing to call for, you know, a justice to step down for whatever reason, but the reality is, that the, the way in which the system has been captured requires us to engage in structural reform in a different way,” McGill Johnson told Psaki.

McGill Johnson’s remarks come weeks after a coalition of 30 advocacy organizations called for structural reform to the Supreme Court, which includes court expansion.

“The project will spotlight the crisis of legitimacy faced by the Court, highlighting the justices’ unethical behavior and partisan rulings, and make the case for structural reforms such as Court expansion,” the coalition said in a news release.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been in the news after a ProPublica report detailed Thomas’ relationship with a billionaire Republican donor that included accepting trips and vacations he did not disclose.