Fighting SCOTUS
- Kal Inois
- 1 hour ago
- 9 min read
The Supreme Court that gutted the Voting Rights Act, shielded a president from criminal prosecution, and overturned fifty years of abortion rights was not built by accident. It was built by one man, funded by a network of billionaires, over thirty years. Here is who did it, what they bought, and every tool available to undo it.
You cannot sue the Supreme Court. You cannot vote its justices out of office. You cannot appeal its decisions to a higher authority. This was built this way deliberately, and it has worked exactly as intended. They were designed this way, and for most of American history they reflected a reasonable faith that the people sitting on the Court would take their independence seriously and apply the law without fear or favor. That faith has been shattered. What sits on the Supreme Court today is not an independent judiciary. It is the product of a thirty-year, billionaire-funded campaign to capture the most powerful unaccountable institution in American government and use it to reshape the country in ways no elected majority could ever achieve. The people who built this Court knew exactly what they were doing. Now we need to know it too.
Leonard Leo
The architect of the current Supreme Court majority is not a president or a senator. He is a private citizen named Leonard Leo. As ProPublica's definitive investigation documents, Leo has spent three decades building the infrastructure to place ideologically reliable conservatives on the federal judiciary at every level, from district courts to the Supreme Court itself. Every one of the six conservative justices now sitting on the Supreme Court was placed there with Leo's direct involvement.
Leo drew up the shortlists of potential justices that †rump released during the 2016 campaign, and personally advised †rump on the nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Before that, he played central roles in the confirmations of Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito. He spent $15 million on public relations campaigns supporting Roberts and Alito alone. His network of over 150 interconnected nonprofit and for-profit organizations, anchored by the $1.6 billion Marble Freedom Trust, operates almost entirely through dark money, meaning donors are never required to be disclosed publicly.
In 2016, †rump made a promise that had never been made before in American presidential history: he vowed to appoint only candidates approved by the Federalist Society, the conservative legal organization Leo has led and shaped for decades. That promise was kept. Every justice †rump appointed came from Leo's list. The Federalist Society did not just advise on Supreme Court picks. Leo also guided over 200 federal judges to confirmation under †rump, reshaping the entire federal judiciary from the bottom up.
Clarence Thomas
APPOINTED BY GEORGE H.W. BUSH, 1991
Leo aided his contentious confirmation at age 25. Thomas has since accepted over $4.75 million in undisclosed gifts from Republican billionaires.
Samuel Alito
APPOINTED BY GEORGE W. BUSH, 2006
Leo organized a luxury Alaska fishing trip for Alito paid for by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, who later had cases before the Court. Not disclosed.
John Roberts
APPOINTED BY GEORGE W. BUSH, 2005
Leo spent $15 million supporting his confirmation. Roberts has presided over the systematic dismantling of the Voting Rights Act.
Neil Gorsuch
APPOINTED BY †RUMP, 2017
Took the seat stolen from President Obama's nominee Merrick Garland after Mitch McConnell blocked a vote for nearly a year.
Brett Kavanaugh
APPOINTED BY †RUMP, 2018
Confirmed despite credible sexual assault allegations. Leo's Judicial Crisis Network spent tens of millions on his confirmation campaign.
Amy Coney Barrett
APPOINTED BY †RUMP, 2020
Confirmed eight days before the 2020 election, after Republicans had blocked Garland for 293 days in 2016 citing the upcoming election.
The Ethics Scandal They Are Getting Away With
The captured Court is not just ideologically compromised. It is ethically compromised, and the evidence is overwhelming and documented. A 20-month Senate Judiciary Committee investigation released in December 2024 produced a 95-page report detailing an extraordinary pattern of undisclosed gifts, luxury travel, and conflicts of interest involving the Court's conservative justices.
Justice Clarence Thomas, according to the Senate report, has accepted gifts and travel from wealthy Republican benefactors valued at over $4.75 million since his 1991 confirmation, the largest haul of undisclosed gifts in modern American judicial history. Billionaire GOP megadonor Harlan Crow provided Thomas with at least 38 vacations including a yacht trip around the Bahamas, 26 private jet flights, a dozen VIP passes to sporting events, purchased Thomas' childhood home and allowed his mother to live there for free, and paid $6,000 a month for Thomas' grandnephew to attend boarding school. Thomas disclosed none of it.
Justice Samuel Alito accepted a luxury Alaska fishing trip organized by Leonard Leo himself, with private jet transportation paid for by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer and accommodations paid for by another conservative donor. Singer's firm later had cases before the Supreme Court. Alito voted with the majority in Singer's favor in a case that resulted in a $2.4 billion windfall for Singer's fund. Alito did not disclose the trip, did not recuse himself, and defended the private jet by arguing the empty seat constituted a "facility" rather than a gift. Justice Alito also refused to recuse himself from cases related to the January 6 insurrection despite flags associated with the Stop the Steal movement flying at two of his properties.
$4.75M ESTIMATED VALUE OF UNDISCLOSED GIFTS TO CLARENCE THOMAS
38 VACATIONS THOMAS ACCEPTED FROM GOP BILLIONAIRE HARLAN CROW
$1.6B SIZE OF LEONARD LEO'S MARBLE FREEDOM TRUST DARK MONEY NETWORK
0 ENFORCEMENT MECHANISMS IN THE COURT'S SELF-WRITTEN ETHICS CODE
In response to the mounting scandals, the Court issued its first ever code of conduct in November 2023. It was written by the justices themselves, for themselves, with no external enforcement mechanism. No independent body can investigate violations. No penalty can be imposed. The justices police themselves. A code of conduct with no enforcement is not a code of conduct. It is a statement of intention with no consequences attached.
"There is something rotten going on in the Supreme Court of the United States of America." – SENATOR DICK DURBIN, CHAIR, SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
The Pattern of Partisan Rulings
The ethics scandals do not exist separately from the rulings. They explain them. When justices are socially embedded with the billionaires and political operatives who funded their confirmation campaigns, when they vacation with Republican donors who have cases before the Court, when they attend political events hosted by the very networks that put them on the bench, the rulings that follow are not judicial independence. They are return on investment.
In the past five years alone, this Court has overturned fifty years of abortion rights in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. It has gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder and now Louisiana v. Callais. It has dramatically weakened environmental regulations in West Virginia v. EPA. It has eliminated affirmative action in college admissions. It has granted broad presidential immunity from criminal prosecution in Trump v. United States, a ruling so extreme that it led Justice Sonia Sotomayor to write in dissent that the majority had made the president a king. It has dismantled the administrative state's ability to regulate corporations. It has weakened gun control measures. And in every one of these cases, the six justices appointed by Republican presidents voted as a unified bloc.
This is not coincidence. The Alliance for Justice, which tracks the Court's ideological pattern, notes that the conservative supermajority has consistently ruled in ways that concentrate power in the executive branch under a Republican president, strip power from regulatory agencies, and reduce the ability of ordinary citizens to seek redress in court. This is the agenda Leonard Leo spent thirty years and over a billion dollars to deliver. The Court is delivering it.
What the People Cannot Do, and What We Can
People often ask whether citizens can sue the Supreme Court for biased rulings. The answer is no. The Court has sovereign immunity, meaning it cannot be sued as an institution. Individual justices cannot be removed through a lawsuit. They serve lifetime appointments under Article III of the Constitution and can only be removed through impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate, requiring a two-thirds supermajority. No Supreme Court justice has ever been successfully impeached and removed in American history.
But that does not mean the people are powerless. Congress has significant constitutional authority over the Court that has rarely been fully exercised. Every one of the following reforms is legal, documented, and actively being proposed in Congress right now. What is missing is the political power to pass them.
Court Expansion
The Constitution does not specify how many justices must sit on the Supreme Court. The number has changed six times in American history. Congress can pass legislation adding justices at any time. President Roosevelt proposed expanding the Court to 15 members in 1937 to break a conservative majority that was blocking his New Deal legislation. Democrats in Congress have introduced legislation to expand the Court to 13 justices, which would allow a Democratic president and Senate to appoint four new members and restore ideological balance. Opponents warn of escalation, but supporters argue the escalation has already happened through the theft of Merrick Garland's seat and the rushed confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett eight days before an election.
Term Limits
The Supreme Court Term Limits and Regular Appointments Act of 2025, introduced in the House, would establish 18-year active terms for justices, after which they would transition to senior status on lower courts. Each president would appoint two justices per term, creating predictable and regular turnover. This would prevent any one ideological bloc from dominating the Court for decades and reduce the extreme political stakes of each vacancy. Legal scholars debate whether this requires a constitutional amendment, but many argue Congress can implement an active/senior justice model through legislation alone.
Jurisdiction Stripping
Under Article III of the Constitution, Congress has the power to define and limit the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction, meaning the categories of cases the Court is allowed to hear on appeal. Congress could pass legislation removing the Court's jurisdiction over certain categories of voting rights cases, redistricting cases, or reproductive rights cases, directing those issues to be decided by lower federal courts instead. This is a constitutionally established power that has been used before in American history, though it is rarely invoked and carries significant legal and political risks.
Binding Ethics Legislation
The Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act, passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2023, would impose a binding, externally enforceable code of conduct on Supreme Court justices for the first time in history. It would require justices to recuse themselves from cases where they have a financial conflict of interest, mandate full disclosure of gifts and travel, and create an independent mechanism to investigate and enforce violations. Republicans have blocked it. Passing it requires winning the Senate.
Impeachment
The Constitution allows Congress to impeach and remove federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, for "high crimes and misdemeanors." The documented ethics violations of Justices Thomas and Alito, including accepting undisclosed gifts in violation of federal law, have led legal scholars and members of Congress to argue that grounds for impeachment exist. No justice has ever been successfully removed this way, and doing so would require a House majority to impeach and a two-thirds Senate majority to convict. It is the hardest path available but it is a constitutional one.
Passing New Legislation That Works Around Rulings
When the Court guts a law, Congress can pass new legislation designed to achieve the same goal through different legal mechanisms that the Court cannot as easily strike down. After Louisiana v. Callais gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by requiring proof of intentional discrimination, Congress could pass new voting rights legislation grounded in different constitutional provisions, such as the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection guarantee or Congress's broad authority over federal elections under Article I. This is exactly what the Freedom to Vote Act attempts to do. Passing it requires winning the House and Senate.
How We Get There
Every single one of these reforms requires the same thing: a Democratic majority in the House and Senate willing to use its power. The filibuster, dark money, and captured courts are not separate problems. They are the same problem, which is that a minority of Americans, backed by extraordinary concentrations of wealth, have built institutional control over all three branches of the federal government. Dismantling that control requires winning elections, and winning elections requires the kind of turnout that cannot be suppressed, gerrymandered, or litigated away.
Leonard Leo spent thirty years and over a billion dollars to build this Court. He did it systematically, patiently, and with a clear long-term strategy. The answer to that kind of organized, sustained effort is more organization, more sustained effort, and more people.
Start today. Find out who represents you and contact them directly. Tell them you demand they co-sponsor the Supreme Court Term Limits and Regular Appointments Act and the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act. Tell them you are watching how they vote. Tell them November 2026 is coming.
Find your U.S. Senators and find your U.S. Representative. Call all of them directly using Call My Congress, which gives you every federal representative's direct phone number by zip code in one click. Call the White House comment line at (202) 456-1111.
They spent thirty years and a billion dollars buying this Court. They installed six justices who have shielded a president from prosecution, stripped women of bodily autonomy, gutted voting rights, and handed white supremacists a legal mechanism to erase Black political power. None of that gets reversed by a lawsuit. It gets reversed by winning power and using it. November 2026 is six months away. This is what we are fighting for.
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