Progressive advocacy group plans $10M offensive targeting Supreme Court

Demand Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group, is mounting a major effort to advocate for Supreme Court reforms and prepare for the effects a second Trump administration could have on the judiciary.

According to plans first shared with POLITICO, the group intends to spend $10 million by the end of this year on a range of activities, from conducting opposition research on potential Supreme Court picks to advocating for ethics reforms for the high court. It will also work to mobilize key constituencies affected by the court’s decisions, including women and young people, and to call out a network of far-right judicial activists that laid the groundwork for the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court.

Demand Justice also aims to elevate the court as a major voting issue in the 2024 election. Whoever wins the White House in November could have the opportunity to replace as many as three retiring Supreme Court justices and further shift circuit courts across the country to the right.

“Our democracy is in an absolute crisis, and the Supreme Court majority is accelerating it,” said Skye Perryman, Demand Justice’s new senior adviser. She is president and chief executive of Democracy Forward, a separate outfit that has positioned itself as an adversary to the judicial advocacy network that is litigating cases seeking to overturn major precedents.

Perryman spoke to POLITICO moments after the court ruled along ideological lines that former President Donald Trump has immunity from criminal prosecution for some actions he took as president while fighting to subvert the 2020 election.

“We have a court that is not protecting our democratic institutions,” she said, also citing the court’s past and anticipated decisions affecting abortion, health care, worker protections and voting rights.

Demand Justice has led an unsuccessful push to expand the Supreme Court since its founding in 2016, which was prompted by the Republican-led Senate effectively blocking then-President Barack Obama’s high court nominee, Merrick Garland. The group largely went silent after the September departure of its previous executive director, Brian Fallon.

Now, multiple court reform groups are working to build an advocacy ecosystem to challenge a deep-pocketed network of ultraconservative judicial activists helmed by Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society co-chair. That network helped fill that seat and two others with Trump’s court nominees by directing tens of millions of dollars to run promotional campaigns to seat them. It also presented conservative justices with legal rationales for overturning major precedents.

The new organizations include Court Accountability , an oversight group created last summer that was a leading endorser of a measure that would prohibit justices from receiving gifts worth more than $50. United for Democracy , meanwhile, is a new umbrella organization meant to bring together many traditional liberal grassroots groups around court reform.

In its next chapter, Demand Justice sees its mandate as broader than just focusing on court nominees, said Perryman. “The thing we want the American people to know is that our Constitution, even in this crisis, provides the tools for people to be able to fight back,” she said, including through congressional action. These efforts are being directed by Maggie Jo Buchanan, an alumni of the liberal Center for American Progress think tank and congressional court reform battles, who is the group’s new managing director.

Potential judicial reforms include court expansion and an enforceable ethics code. Congressional Democrats have introduced bills that would create an independent ethics office and internal investigations counsel, while other ideas discussed by the party include increasing the number of seats on the court or limiting justices, who currently enjoy lifetime appointments, to 18-year terms .

Demand Justice, Court Accountability and other court reform groups such as Fix the Court face formidable headwinds regardless of the outcome of the election. While many progressive lawmakers now support expanding the court, President Joe Biden and the White House have not endorsed the idea. Either way, Supreme Court reforms would require a 60-vote threshold in the Senate, making them highly unlikely.

In June, Senate Republicans blocked legislation that would require the court to adopt a binding code of conduct for all justices and establish procedures to investigate alleged ethical violations.

Still, the group says it is prepared to keep pressuring Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) after some Democrats criticized him for failing to hold hearings.

“Holding hearings, forcing hard votes on bills or even subpoenas,” said Buchanan. “Whatever it takes.”