We Need to Talk About Term Limits

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Strict Scrutiny is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. It's back to school season, and this year, five million children across Texas are going to be greeted by the Ten Commandments in their classrooms. Yes, you heard that right. Texas politicians passed a law requiring the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom, forcing their religion on every kid in those schools. Twenty-eight families in Texas, supported by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, are taking the fight to the Supreme Court. And they need you to amplify their voices before the Supreme Court gets its hands on this case. And we all know what the Fifth Circuit did. Obviously, they let Texas get away with all of this.

They're going to go up, but we're going to fight to get them taken down.

That's Texas public school parent Ted Lowe. Ted and Rebecca Lowe are an interfaith couple. Ted is Jewish and Rebecca is Christian. And their kids are in Texas public schools. The story they tell in this video is moving, and we hope everyone hears and shares it. Look, there is a human cost of Christian nationalist policies, like these Ten Commandments laws, and the decisions of Supreme Court hands down. Every child deserves access to public education where they aren't subject to state-imposed religion or religious instruction or coercion. Public education is supposed to be open and available to everyone. It's supposed to foster pluralism, not one specific religion.

Visit au.org/10c to learn more about this case and how you can help join the fight to protect Church-State separation. We talked a little bit about this case on our regular episode last week, but there's so much more to be said and to learn about the people who are fighting back.

SPEAKER_2 (1:42)

Mr. Chief Justice, may I please report? It's an old joke, but when an argument against two beautiful ladies like this, they're going to have the last word.

SPEAKER_3 (1:54)

She spoke not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said, I ask no favor for my sex.

All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.

Kate Shaw (2:24)

Hello and welcome back to Strict Scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. I'm Kate Shaw, your lone host for this edition of our special bonus series, Hot Supreme Court Reform September.

And for this installment of our series, I am happy to be joined by returning guest Alicia Bannon, a senior director at the Brennan Center for Justice, where she leads the Center's Judiciary Program and its Kohlberg Center on the US. Supreme Court. Alicia, welcome back to Strict Scrutiny.

Alicia Bannon (2:51)

Thank you so much for having me.

Kate Shaw (2:52)

So we're really happy to have you. And as I just said, we are doing a series about Supreme Court Reform.

People, I think, have a sense that something has gone deeply wrong with this Supreme Court. There was a Gallup poll in late July that had Supreme Court approval at 33% at or near all time historic lows. So it is not just us who have the distinct impression that something is badly amiss.

And we think it's important for conversations about the Supreme Court right now to focus on specific reforms to the Supreme Court. We will definitely continue on the show and in other venues to criticize the court in both general and specific terms. But in addition, we wanted to bring listeners and viewers a series of episodes that were really laser focused on specific potential reforms to the court. And our topic for today is term limits. Alicia, this is something that you've been thinking and writing about for quite some time and I'm excited to get into it with you. But before we drill down on term limits, I want to take a step back and ask you to talk kind of generally about how you would characterize what is so wrong with the Supreme Court.

Alicia Bannon (4:04)

Well, thank you so much for having me and for starting this conversation. I think it's a really important conversation to have.

I think in a fundamental way, the Supreme Court is failing in the role it is supposed to be playing in our democratic system. It has been gutting the role of Congress. We saw that this term in the Kalei decision where it eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, in the Slaughter case where it eviscerated independent agencies. The court's also been aggrandizing its own role. We see that in its conduct on the shadow docket where it has both vertically, when you look at its relationship with the lower courts, and then when you look at its relationship with the executive branch, it's both been behaving in a way that's unprecedented and frankly, inconsistent if you look at how it has engaged with the Trump administration as compared to previous administrations. We're just seeing more broadly a lack of respect for the traditional constraints, things like precedent that are supposed to keep the court in its lane. I think across a whole bunch of arenas, we just see a court that's not playing the function that we need it to play in our democracy.