Ocasio-Cortez said that Justice Samuel Alito “accepted tens of thousands of dollars in lavish vacation gifts from a billionaire who lobbied to cancel the student loan forgiveness” and then “voted to overturn” the student loan relief programme. She based this on recent ethics allegations against Justice Samuel Alito. All of this is happening just over a year after the conservative majority of the Supreme Court (6-3) threw out Roe v. Wade, which gave women the right to have an abortion.
After the US Supreme Court made a series of big decisions, Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York accused the justices of “destroying the legitimacy of the court” by not being watched. Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN’s State of the Union, “The Supreme Court has not been getting the proper oversight it needs to keep its own legitimacy.” “And in doing so, they have destroyed the legitimacy of the court, which is very bad for our democracy as a whole.”
Her comments came after the highest court in the country made a number of conservative decisions that struck down affirmative action in colleges (a way to make universities more diverse), LGBTQ+ rights protections, and President Biden’s programme to help people pay off their student loans.
“These kinds of rulings show that the court is moving dangerously towards authoritarianism and concentrating power,” she said. “In fact, members of the court, like Justice Elena Kagan, have said that the court is starting to act like a legislature right now.”
