LGBTQ+ Groups Call for Expanding Supreme Court, Lifting Filibuster
statement issued Friday by Lambda Legal, GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the Transgender Law Center. “The Supreme Court has lost the public’s confidence in its integrity and has eroded its own legitimacy.”In an additional statement, Lambda Legal said these recent decisions constituted “legally unsound and devastating upending of long-settled precedents, heedless of the harmful impacts on the American people.”Lambda cited the ruling in Dobbs v.
Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to ban or severely restrict abortion, as well as decisions that weakened the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority, undermined church-state separation, expanded gun rights, and more.“To justify its elimination of some protections and substantial constriction of others, this Court has employed ahistorical readings of American history, and a bizarre mode of analysis that limits essential rights exclusively to those that ostensibly were recognized and enjoyed by the people who had full legal status a century or two ago, thus excluding any specific legal needs of women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people, among others,” Lambda Legal wrote.The joint statement calls on the Senate to lift the filibuster rule, under which it takes 60 votes to end debate on a bill and move to a vote on the bill itself, “at least to allow Senate consideration of Supreme Court reform and voting rights restoration.”The groups seek passage of the Judiciary Act of 2021, which would increase the number of justices on the court to equal the number of circuits in the federal judiciary, which is 12.
