When should you stop abiding a court's rulings?
Justices take bribes and fly insurrection flags. They strip our rights while their wives try to overturn elections. They gut voting protections, bless gerrymandering, unleash unlimited dark money, and grant presidents immunity for crimes. When journalists catch them accepting undisclosed gifts from billionaires, they rewrite the ethics rules to make it legal after the fact.
So why are states still obeying?
Everything in that first paragraph should put at least three justices in prison. Taking six-figure “gratuities” from billionaires who have cases before you is bribery. Failing to disclose it is fraud. Ruling in favor of the people who paid you is corruption so plain a first-year law student could draft the indictment. But no prosecutor will touch them. No institution will hold them accountable. The Court has made itself untouchable, and everyone in a position to do something about it has decided to wait for the next election instead. That fact alone tells you everything you need to know about whether this Court deserves our compliance.
The Court has lost its legitimacy. But the assumption of obedience persists. Rulings from justices who took bribes still get treated as law. Elections they’ve rigged are still treated as the path to reform. The hope remains that the system will self-correct while the people who broke it keep breaking it.
What’s the case for continued compliance? Let’s examine it and watch it fall apart.
The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. That ruling made it easier to suppress votes in ways that benefit Republicans. The Court blessed partisan gerrymandering in Rucho v. Common Cause, making it easier to rig maps in ways that benefit Republicans. The Court unleashed unlimited dark money in Citizens United v. FEC, making it easier to buy elections in ways that benefit Republicans. The Court granted sweeping presidential immunity in Trump v. United States, shielding election interference that benefits Republicans.
Call it what it is: a pattern. Every ruling expands the power of the faction that controls the Court while shrinking the ability of anyone else to challenge that control.
And while issuing these rulings, members of the Court have been accepting undisclosed gifts from billionaires who benefit from the outcomes. Justice Alito took a private jet flight worth over $100,000 from hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, never disclosed it, then participated in at least ten cases involving Singer’s fund without recusing. Singer won a $2.4 billion ruling. Justice Thomas accepted years of luxury travel, real estate transactions, and tuition payments from Harlan Crow, whose interests repeatedly appeared before the Court. When journalists exposed these arrangements, the Judicial Conference responded not by investigating but by rewriting the disclosure rules to retroactively excuse the conduct.
So when someone says “just win the next election and expand the Court,” what they’re actually proposing is this: Win an election the Court has made easier to rig. Overcome maps the Court has made easier to gerrymander. Outspend dark money the Court has made unlimited. Then use that victory to reform an institution that will rule your reform unconstitutional the moment you try it.
Legitimacy comes from two sources: process and substance. A court is legitimate when it follows proper procedures and when its rulings are substantively defensible. Process legitimacy means the court followed proper procedures to take its seat, follows its own precedents, and applies law neutrally. Substantive legitimacy means the rulings are grounded in law and reason rather than desired outcomes. When both fail, the court is just issuing orders and calling them law.
The preconditions for illegitimacy aren’t hypothetical. They can be named.
Process capture occurs when an institution no longer follows its own rules, or rewrites the rules to protect its own misconduct. The September 2024 Judicial Conference rule changes meet this standard. The Conference retroactively legalized disclosure violations that were clearly prohibited when they occurred. An institution changing the rules after getting caught.
Substantive corruption occurs when rulings consistently benefit those who have provided undisclosed benefits to decision-makers. The Singer cases meet this standard. The pattern of Crow-connected rulings meets this standard. When a justice accepts gifts from a party and then rules for that party, the ruling is substantively compromised regardless of what legal reasoning accompanies it.
Self-dealing occurs when an institution rules on cases affecting its own legitimacy and always rules in its own favor. The Court has blocked every meaningful ethics reform. It has blessed its own immunity from oversight. It granted presidential immunity that shields anyone who helped capture the Court in the first place.
Enforcement asymmetry occurs when an institution enforces rules against some parties but not others. The Judicial Conference refuses to refer Thomas or Alito for investigation despite documented violations. Lower court judges face discipline for conduct far less serious. The rules exist, but they apply only to those without power.
Democratic insulation occurs when an institution sits beyond democratic reform. Lifetime appointments mean voters cannot remove corrupt justices. Self-policing ethics means no external accountability. A captured Senate confirmation process means replacements will continue the pattern. No electoral path to reform exists because they designed the institution to sit beyond electoral reach.
The Supreme Court currently meets all five conditions.
Given that, what would have to be true for continued compliance to remain the right choice?
The answer people give is that the alternative is worse. Chaos. Institutional breakdown. Constitutional crisis.
But that answer assumes compliance prevents those outcomes. What if compliance enables them?
Consider what continued compliance produces. Elections become progressively less fair as voter suppression and gerrymandering compound. Dark money becomes progressively more dominant as disclosure requirements weaken. Executive power becomes progressively less accountable as immunity doctrines expand. And the institution blessing all of this becomes progressively less reformable as it rules every reform unconstitutional.
That trajectory produces crisis in slow motion. Rights erode, dark money floods in, executive power escapes accountability, and nobody panics because it happens gradually enough for the captors to consolidate. The people telling us to work within the system call this stability. Following the rulings of a captured Court doesn’t prevent the breakdown. It paces the breakdown in a way that benefits the people breaking it.
The people waiting for the system to self-correct are betting that the system remains functional enough to permit correction. But the system’s ability to self-correct depends on fair elections, enforceable laws, and legitimate courts. The Court has undermined all three. Waiting for the system to fix itself means waiting for the people who broke it to decide they’ve had enough.
They won’t. This is working exactly as they intended.
So what’s the alternative?
It doesn’t start with ignoring the Court. It starts with states building the capacity to assert their own sovereignty. Passing laws that protect their citizens from federal corruption. Creating enforcement mechanisms that don’t depend on federal cooperation. Establishing revenue streams that don’t require federal permission. Building interstate compacts that coordinate opposition across jurisdictions.
The legal foundation exists. Dual sovereignty, affirmed by the Court itself in Gamble v. United States, holds that states and the federal government are separate sovereigns with independent authority. Supremacy Clause immunity protects federal officials acting within the scope of their duties, but corruption is not within the scope of anyone’s duties. States have police powers to protect their citizens. When a federal official’s corrupt act harms a state’s citizens, that state has jurisdiction to prosecute.
Would the Court try to stop it? Of course. The Court will rule that states cannot do this. But then states face a choice: comply with a ruling from a captured Court protecting its own corruption, or assert their sovereignty and force a constitutional confrontation.
Confrontation is coming whether we choose it or not. We can pick the fight while states still have leverage, or we can wait until they don’t. Every day of compliance, every ruling we treat as legitimate, helps the GOP consolidate single party rule through electoral autocracy. The clock is running and it runs in one direction.
The Court’s authority has always depended on everyone agreeing to be bound by its rulings. That agreement never came automatically. It depended on the Court maintaining the legitimacy that justifies obedience. The Court has burned through that legitimacy. It has taken the gifts, made the rulings, rewritten the rules, and dared anyone to do something about it.
At some point, states will. We need to be ready when they do.
Free resources from the ER team at buymeacoffee.com/TheER: the EARR booklet for turning readers into activists, Soft Secession: Policies That Pass, and a printable tri-fold you can hand out locally. If you want to work through this with people already doing it, join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/GkFSjcze
References
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010). https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZS.html
Elliott, J., Kaplan, J., & Mierjeski, A. (2023, April 13). Billionaire Harlan Crow bought property from Clarence Thomas. The justice didn’t disclose the deal. ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-real-estate-scotus
Elliott, J., Kaplan, J., & Mierjeski, A. (2023, June 20). Justice Samuel Alito took luxury fishing vacation with GOP billionaire who later had cases before the court. ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishing-trip-paul-singer-scotus-supreme-court
Elliott, J., Kaplan, J., Mierjeski, A., & Murphy, B. (2023, May 4). Clarence Thomas’ friend acknowledges that billionaire Harlan Crow paid tuition for the child Thomas was raising “as a son.” ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-tuition-martin-school
Gamble v. United States, 587 U.S. 678 (2019). https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/17-646_d18e.pdf
Judicial Conference of the United States. (2024, September 23). Guide to judiciary policy: Vol. 2D, financial disclosure (Transmittal 02-085). United States Courts. https://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/document/guide-vol02d.pdf
Kaplan, J., Elliott, J., & Mierjeski, A. (2023, April 6). Clarence Thomas and the billionaire. ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-luxury-travel-gifts-crow
Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital, Ltd., 573 U.S. 134 (2014). https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/12-842
Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U.S. 684 (2019). https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/18-422
Senate Judiciary Committee, Majority Staff. (2024, December 21). An investigation of the ethics challenge at the Supreme Court. United States Senate. https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/releases/senate-judiciary-committee-releases-revealing-investigative-report-on-ethical-crisis-at-the-supreme-court
Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013). https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-96_6k47.pdf
Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024). https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
