Biden calls for SCOTUS reforms, Trump ally cries immunity, South Carolina's map saga ends

 

Friday, Aug. 2

The past week was packed with SCOTUS-related news both on and off the docket. President Biden publicly endorsed a slate of reforms for the U.S. Supreme Court. Citing the Court’s recent immunity ruling, Trump ally and former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows wants to move his Georgia election interference charges to federal court. And, the South Carolina congressional redistricting case comes to a close — after a disappointing decision from the high Court.

Biden calls for term limits, binding ethics code for Supreme Court

In the remaining few months of his presidency, Biden penned an op-ed in the Washington Post calling for a series of proposals that would reshape the U.S. Supreme Court, including setting 18-year term limits for justices. The move comes amid a yearslong effort from some congressional Democrats to reform the Court in response to what they’ve described as troubling ethical lapses from certain justices, decisions that stripped away critical federal protections, and waning public confidence. In addition to term limits, Biden endorsed a constitutional amendment stating there is no immunity for crimes a former president committed in office, an apparent response to the Court’s ruling in Trump’s immunity case. He also called for a “binding code of conduct,” which would amount to a stronger ethics code compared to the current one with no enforcement mechanism. But Biden can only do so much. It’s largely up to Congress to regulate the court, and a number of proposals that would achieve Biden’s objectives have stalled in the House and Senate. According to Axios, the White House didn’t consult with leading Democrats on the issue — like Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee — though they publicly supported the proposals. Read more about Biden’s SCOTUS proposals and the many efforts by congressional Democrats to reform the high Court.

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Trump ally tries to move Georgia case, citing immunity ruling

Speaking of SCOTUS, former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows wants the Court to intervene in the Georgia election interference case against Meadows and the former president. Meadows was one of 19 defendants charged in August of 2023 for efforts in trying to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. In his petition, Meadows used the Trump immunity decision to argue that the immunity the Court carved out for former presidents also applies to Meadows as a former federal officer. “That decision makes clear that federal immunity fully protects former officers, often requires difficult and fact-intensive judgment calls at the margins,” the petition says, “and provides not just a substantive immunity but a use immunity that protects against the use of official acts to try to hold a current or former federal officer liable for unofficial acts.” Meadows’s request last Friday follows a ruling from the state appeals court which paused the case while an appeal from Trump’s team moves forward. Read more on Meadow’s petition.

South Carolina redistricting case concludes after SCOTUS decision

The federal challenge to South Carolina’s congressional map has concluded, two months after the Court ruled that the state’s map is not unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered, reversing a lower court decision that blocked the map’s 1st Congressional District. On Friday, the plaintiffs in the case — the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and a Black voter — agreed to dismiss their remaining claim in a federal lawsuit that challenged the state’s congressional map as being racially gerrymandered and intentionally discriminatory. The move ends the nearly-three-year-long case that reached the high Court. In May, the Court found there was no “no direct evidence” that the Legislature relied on race when it drew the 1st Congressional District, and that the evidence provided to support that conclusion fell “far short of showing that race, not partisan preferences, drove the districting process,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion. The decision was slammed by voting and civil rights advocates, in large part because it seemed to raise the standard by which federal courts assess racial gerrymandering claims. Now, the same map is being challenged in state court as an alleged partisan gerrymander. Read more about the federal case’s implications and the Court’s decision.

OPINION: The fight to certify elections has already begun

Recently, Marc Elias voiced concerns in a Rolling Stone article about the possibility that pro-Trump election deniers may refuse to certify accurate election results at the county level. Those concerns soon reached far and wide, Elias writes, "with thousands of people taking to social media and flooding Democracy Docket’s inbox with questions about how this could happen and what can be done to prevent this seemingly new threat.” But the threat isn’t new. Read more here.

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What happened in election lawsuits in July and what cases should you look out for in August? Marc Elias and Paige Moskowitz break it all down. Watch on YouTube here.