The Supreme Court Relies on Our Apathy. Cases that Wither Voting and Labor Rights Prove It.

The U.S. Supreme Court. Photo by Duncan Lock.

The Advent of Court Apathy 

The ‘Marble Palace’ inscribed with the words “Equal Justice Under the Law” houses the United States Supreme Court, esteemed by many as the upper echelon of law and justice. Many, though, see the Supreme Court as a purely ornamental and feeble institution. To be fair, the Supreme Court appears out of the means of the general public who cannot vote for justices. The Court maintains this distance from the public, with the same nine justices occupying the bench for decades. Court apathy is fueled by the fact that many of us don’t see ourselves and our identities reflected among the impersonal justices. While America gets more diverse, the Court remains frozen in time with many justices, past and present, being white, wealthy, Ivy League-educated men. Further, a poll conducted in 2018 showed that almost 60% of Americans under 35 couldn’t name a single justice on the court. With the court being seen as an elitist and inaccessible boys’ club, why should we care to know who serves on it and what they think?

Additionally, the perception of the Court as apolitical has become a view of the past. Starkly politically motivated Republican court-packing began in 1987 with the failed appointment of Robert Bork, a conservative legal scholar, to the Court. Motivated by this loss, Senator Mitch McConnell led Senate Republicans in a crusade to pack the courts with conservative judges from the Federalist Society. Trump’s presidency gave this movement a new heyday with the appointment of three conservative justices, culminating with the deeply hypocritical appointment of Amy Coney Barett after the Republican blocking of former President Obama’s appointee, Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

The Rise of Public Court Criticism

Despite apathy, many Americans are catching on to this politicization. An overwhelming majority (84%) of respondents to a recent series of Pew Research Center polls believe that justices should keep their politics out of their deliberations. Only about 16% of those respondents said that the justices are successful at keeping their personal politics separate from their activities on the bench. Overall, only about 54% of Americans say they have a favorable opinion of the Court, the lowest that number has ever been. It’s pertinent that the rise in Court criticism is channeled to promote engagement in the Court’s activity and ensure that justices aren’t using their singular power to erode our rights. 

Unfortunately, the Court doesn’t make it easy. For example, it does not permit oral arguments to be televised and only recently has begun live-streaming the audio of oral arguments. The Court is relying on collective apathy and skepticism, coupled with its intricate and inaccessible nature, to push monumental and likely controversial decisions into motion without the public even noticing. From labor, voting, and reproductive justice, the Supreme Court is effectively tainting our privileges. They are altering the lives of the American public, but many of us fail to notice.

Deterioration of Voting Rights: Merril v. Milligan and Brnovich v. DNC

In the past year, the Supreme Court has issued several such life-altering decisions. Voting rights, in particular, are at stake. The Court’s rejection of Trump’s bid to block the release of the House Select Committee’s findings into the January 6th insurrection may seem like evidence of the Court strengthening election integrity. However, this decision clearly does not reflect the Court’s other, perhaps more substantial, decisions regarding voting rights in Alabama. On February 7, 2022 the Court handed down its ruling of Merrill v. Milligan, blocking a previous decision by a federal district court that held the Alabama legislature’s redistricting plan in violation of the Voting Rights Act. By handing down its ruling, the Court effectively disenfranchised Black voters of a seat in the House of Representatives. According to the plan, Black voters, who account for 27% of the population in Alabama, would only have 1 out of the 7 seats that the state holds in the House. On January 24, a three-judge court unanimously blocked Alabama’s gerrymandered congressional map. Instead, as the NAACP legal defense fund explains, the court ordered the, “State legislature to draft a new congressional map that complies with the Voting Rights Act by including two districts where Black voters have the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.” Alabama refused, taking the case up to the Supreme Court. They sided with the state, ultimately setting a dangerous new precedent that not only encourages the disenfranchisement of Black voters but also further erodes the Voting Rights Act, which was already worn thin by Shelby County v. Holder. The landmark 2013 case ended in the Court’s holding of the preclearance clause, outlined in Section 5 of the VRA, as unconstitutional. The preclearance clause originally mandated, “[. . .] States and localities with a history of discrimination [must] obtain approval from the Department of Justice or a court before changing voting rules.” The removal of preclearance opened the floodgates for States to install voting rules that make voting arduous for specific voting blocs, particularly disenfranchising voters of color.

The Court has also recently upheld alarming voting provisions in Arizona, notorious for its past in disenfranchising voters. Their decision in Merrill v. Milligan follows their recent ruling in Brnovich v. DNC, in which the court sided with Arizona’s Attorney General in an opinion that undermines Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, prohibits voting procedures and practices that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership of a minority group listed in Section 4 of the Act. 

Arizona has two measures in place that make voting unnecessarily arduous for minority groups that were upheld by the Supreme Court. Pioneered by Arizona House Republicans, H.B 2023, needlessly narrows down who can return a ballot, making it a felony to return someone else’s signed and sealed ballot. This provision is unique to Arizona; 24 states and D.C permit the voter to designate an individual to return the ballot, and an additional 13 states never chose to specify who can return a ballot. The Court also upheld Arizona’s Out-of-Precinct (OOP) voting rule, barring individuals from casting their ballots in precincts other than that in which they reside. The OOP regulation is magnified by the fact that, as explained by Democracy Docket, “finding the correct precinct is particularly difficult in Arizona, where polling locations change with great frequency and the population has one of the highest moving rates in the country.” These decisions have dealt a dangerous blow to voting rights in Arizona, where voting officials already toss out ballots at the highest rate in the nation. These ballots contain otherwise legible votes at the county, state, and federal levels; other states count votes that apply to the voter’s district, regardless of whether the voter had cast a down-ballot vote for candidates outside their district. Both H.B 2023 and the OOP provision come down the hardest on minority groups, including disabled people. They erode election integrity by making it increasingly difficult for individuals to have their votes counted and for their voices to be heard. By upholding Arizona’s voting rights provisions, the Supreme Court makes clear that it stands for voter disenfranchisement and paves the ground for states to copy and build upon the dangerous redistricting in Alabama or harmful practices in Arizona. Unfortunately, voting rights are only one of the areas in which the Court has been actively eroding the public’s rights. 

Dismantling Labor Rights: Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid

The Supreme Court has also been making monumental decisions regarding labor rights. Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid represents the severity of the Court's stance on labor organizing, as they completely disregarded precedent in a decision that has highly dangerous implications. In 2015, a group of organizers from the United Farm Workers (UFW) union entered a private nursery with almost 500 farmworkers to pass out leaflets about their union and educate workers briefly on fair labor practices. The UFW’s actions were protected by the 1975 California Agricultural Labor Relations Act (CALRA). The CALRA allows organizers to enter private properties for a maximum of 3 hours on 120 days out of the year to speak to farmworkers. Breaking from the precedent that, “[b]efore the 20th century, the Takings Clause was understood to be limited to physical appropriations of property,” the Court argued that the UFW was violating the Takings Clause of the 5th amendment, therefore ruling in favor of Cedar Point Nursery in a 6-3 majority. The Court argued specifically that the UFW’s actions constitute a per se takings, where the government totally seizes private land without just compensation. The Court essentially asserted that a law that allows organizers to go onto private land for a couple of hours for a certain number of days a year to perform unionization and collective bargaining activities is equivalent to the government seizing the land of a property owner and decreasing the “value” of the land. 

The Court’s interpretation is an egregious violation of labor rights and discourages unionization. For one, the CALRA was a hard-earned win borne by the blood of workers who, led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, orchestrated the Delano Grape Strike and Boycott and the march to Sacramento, among many other efforts. The fact that a few decades later this law was withered by the highly detached Supreme Court is shameful. The Court’s interpretation also makes the assumption that unionization is inherently negative, when in fact unionization and fair working conditions prevent riots and month-long strikes, which are more disruptive to the workplace. Furthermore, if the UFW can’t reach the farmworkers where they know they will be, at the farm, where else are they supposed to reach the already marginalized and isolated workers? Migrant farmworkers work in unbearable conditions where, “they experience significant occupational and environmental exposures, deplorable living conditions, limited safety training, and few supporting regulations.” In tandem with deplorable conditions that deteriorate their health and quality of life, they don’t receive just compensation proportional to the profits they bring to the farm owners who reap the benefits of their subjugation. 

Some legal scholars have even argued that the Court’s interpretation might enter the terrifying realm of perceiving the farmworkers as slaves.  While that is a contentious point, it is evident that the Court’s interpretation strips workers of their autonomy. In this instance, workers are almost entirely deprived of the choice to join a union and are entrapped in dangerous working conditions of migrant farm work. The Court hinges its entire argument on a right to exclude, which is a property right that allows property owners, “[the] right to forbid a use or set of uses of a particular resource by one or more people.” In this case, the Court ruled that the nursery had the right to exclude the UFW from their land. While the Court expressly states that their interpretation doesn’t touch the right to exclude minorities from a place of business, for example, their reasoning fails to make a distinction between the two. The failure to distinguish why the right to exclude can be applied in Cedar Point Nursery and not to minorities trying to enter a place of business could pose a slippery slope in the future and unleash discriminatory laws and regulations.

Combating Apathy with Increased Engagement

Whether you decide to focus on Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, Brnovich v. DNC, or Merrill v. Milligan, it is evident that the Supreme Court is causing irreparable damage behind closed doors and out of the public’s awareness. It is now more paramount than ever that we stay plugged into the actions of the courts—Supreme, district, circuit, and otherwise—because our privileges are indefinitely under attack. While it may seem like we have no control over the matter, now is the time to act. With the retirement of Justice Breyer and Biden’s nomination of a Black, liberal female justice, the Court will undergo much-needed changes. However, one new justice is not enough to overturn the calculated political scheme of court-packing by Senate Republicans. It’s time to pack the courts with fair and well-intentioned judges that won’t deteriorate constitutionally given rights, but that will instead strengthen them. Now is an important time to stay engaged because the Court has more monumental cases next session. During the spring or summer session, the Court will be delivering a watershed decision on reproductive rights in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case. Effectively combatting Court apathy manifests in a multi-pronged effort with both institutional initiatives such as the expansion and diversification of the Supreme Court and greater circulation in education and fact-based information regarding the Court. The expansion of the Court to negate the decades-long, politicized court-packing carried out by Republicans in the Senate is paramount. While long-overdue, it’s important that Judges represent a vast array of backgrounds and identities to minimize any disconnect between the American public and the Judges and encourage public engagement. Greater circulation of the Court’s decisions in an effort to increase the accessibility of the Court is equally as important. This can encompass changes such as greater media coverage of the Court’s decisions or the increased availability of Court transcripts and oral arguments that are made digestible for the average person. While the inscription, “Equal Justice Under the Law” seems to be only a pipe dream of a few, for those who are not represented on the Court, it’s a dream that hopefully doesn’t die in the darkness of ignorance and apathy. 

Betel Tadesse is a first-year at Columbia College. Tadesse is studying political science with a specific interest in political protest and voting rights. In her free time, you can find her going for walks in Central Park or making art.