AOC Challenges SCOTUS ‘Legitimacy’ After Triple Court Rulings: ‘Dangerous Creep Towards Authoritarianism’

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) accused the Supreme Court’s conservative justice majority of pulling the country toward “authoritarianism” with their trio of rulings on major political cornerstones last week.

Ocasio-Cortez joined CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday to discuss the court’s rulings that struck down affirmative action, LGBTQ protections, and President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness program. The congresswoman spoke to this by referring to the recent ethics controversies surrounding the court, which she also accused of “expanding their role into acting as though they are Congress itself.”

“That, I believe, is an expansion of power that we really must be focusing on,” she said. “The danger of this court and the abuse of power in this court, particularly as it is related to the entanglements around conflicts of interest as well.”

Ocasio-Cortez has been outspoken in the past with her slams on the court and her opinion that the court lacks “legitimacy.” After slamming Justice Clarence Thomas for sparring with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on affirmative action, the New York rep. endorsed limitations for the power of justices.

The courts, if they were to proceed without any check on their power, without any balance on their power, then we will start to see an undemocratic and, frankly, dangerous authoritarian expansion of power in the Supreme Court, which is what we are seeing now, from the overturning of abortion rights to the ruling that discrimination and, frankly, stripping the full personhood and dignity of LGBTQ people in the United States. These are the types of rulings that signal a dangerous creep towards authoritarianism and centralization of power in the court.

Ocasio-Cortez concluded by assessing that Congress has the necessary tools to scrutinize the Supreme Court, which she said “has not been receiving the adequate oversight necessary in order to preserve their own legitimacy.”

“And in the process,” she added, “they themselves have been destroying the legitimacy of the court, which is profoundly dangerous for our entire democracy.”

Watch above via CNN.