⚖️ Supreme Court Accountability | March 20, 2026
Supreme Court Accountability, March 20: KBJ's dissents force a shadow docket reckoning, Roberts warns on threats to judges, and Arkansas's Ten Commandments law is blocked.
This week's Supreme Court accountability news carries something we don't always get: proof that dissent works. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson spent ten months issuing blistering, often solo condemnations of the conservative supermajority's shadow docket abuses — and this week, the Court quietly did what she demanded, moving the TPS cases for 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians off the shadow docket and onto full argument in April. Meanwhile, Chief Justice John Roberts made a rare public appearance to warn that personally directed hostility toward judges is dangerous — notable words from a man who said nothing when Trump called for the impeachment of a sitting federal judge and publicly shamed Justices Gorsuch and Barrett for ruling against his tariffs. And in Arkansas, a federal judge permanently blocked Act 573, the law requiring the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom, ruling it a clear First Amendment violation. These stories are connected: the courts are still doing their job, imperfectly and under extraordinary pressure, and People Power United is part of why accountability still has a pulse.
Why the Grassroots Resistance Can’t Wait
💥 Your Power in Action: What You Can Do Today
📜 Take action: Tell Congress to pass the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act
⚖️ Take action: Tell the Supreme Court to enforce the new ethics code
🚫 Take action: Tell the Supreme Court: Trump is not above the law
🗳️ Bonus action: Register to vote, vote in every election, and help your community do the same. Reproductive freedom is won and lost at the ballot box.
👑 Bonus action: Sign up for the next national No Kings Day of Action and show up in solidarity with everyone whose rights are under attack.
🏛️What’s Happening Right Now at the Supreme Court
⚖️ Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Solo Dissents Appear to Have Moved the Supreme Court — and Saved TPS for Hundreds of Thousands of Immigrants
After ten months of fierce, often solo dissents warning that the conservative supermajority was weaponizing the shadow docket to accelerate Trump’s mass deportation agenda, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson appears to have forced a course correction. The Supreme Court moved the TPS cases for 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians off the shadow docket, set full oral arguments for April, and declined to strip protections in the meantime — addressing Jackson’s two core demands: protect immigrants from irreparable harm while the law is properly argued. (Slate)
Why It Matters for Democracy: Jackson’s willingness to call out her colleagues — publicly, repeatedly, and without pulling punches — is exactly what judicial accountability looks like from the inside. She named the harm, named the pattern, and named the failure: a court “wordlessly overriding” lower court rulings to let the administration “disrupt as many lives as possible, as quickly as possible.” That the Court appears to have finally heeded her is not a small thing. It is also not a final victory. The conservative supermajority will still issue a ruling in June that could ultimately strip TPS from hundreds of thousands of families. But it will have to explain itself — and explanation is the beginning of accountability.
🗣️ Chief Justice Roberts Warns That Personal Attacks on Judges Are “Dangerous” — but Won’t Name the President Doing It
Speaking at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston, Chief Justice John Roberts made his first public comments since Trump attacked justices who ruled against his sweeping tariffs, declaring that personally directed hostility toward judges is dangerous and “has got to stop.” Roberts did not name Trump, insisted attacks come from “all over” and “not just any one political perspective,” and acknowledged that criticism of judicial opinions is a healthy part of the job. More than 560 violent threats against federal judges were reported last year, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. (Bloomberg)
Why It Matters for Democracy: Roberts is right that threats to judges are dangerous — and utterly inadequate in his response to them. Trump called a sitting federal judge “wacky, nasty, crooked and totally out of control.” He declared the Supreme Court a “weaponized and unjust political organization.” He said Gorsuch and Barrett’s tariff ruling was “an embarrassment to their families.” Roberts’s answer was a speech at a university where he declined to say the president’s name. That is not accountability — that is the appearance of it. A binding ethics code with real enforcement, term limits, and meaningful congressional oversight are what protect judicial independence from authoritarian pressure. Speeches that refuse to name the threat are not enough, and People Power United will keep saying so.
✝️ Federal Judge Permanently Blocks Arkansas Law Requiring the Ten Commandments in Every Public School Classroom
U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks issued a permanent injunction against Arkansas Act 573, the state law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom and library, ruling it a clear violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Seven families of different religious and nonreligious backgrounds brought the case after lower court precedent — which Act 573 directly mirrors — had already established that such mandates are unconstitutional. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced she will appeal. (Truthout)
Why It Matters for Democracy: Judge Brooks put it plainly: children cannot avoid reading a government-mandated religious text posted in their classroom for thirteen years of compulsory schooling the way an adult can choose not to walk past a monument. This is not a close constitutional question — the Supreme Court already settled it. Arkansas passed this law anyway, daring the courts to stop it. That is what Christian nationalist legislating looks like in practice: use state power to impose religion on children, then dare judges to enforce the Constitution. Courts did their job here. The question is whether a future Supreme Court, shaped by the Federalist Society and dark money, will continue to do so — or whether it will rewrite the Establishment Clause to let states force religion into every classroom in America.
⚖️ WHY THESE STORIES MATTER
Justice Jackson stood alone for months while Roberts gave a speech that declined to name the president doing the damage, and a judge in Arkansas applied the Constitution the way it was written. These are not equivalent acts of courage, and Supreme Court accountability demands we say so. The movement that shows up, speaks out, and demands term limits and a binding ethics code is the reason any of it is still happening — and it cannot stop now.
The 40-year Federalist Society pipeline was built to outlast exactly this moment: to install enough loyalists on enough courts that courageous dissents get overridden, constitutional rulings get appealed into a captured Supreme Court, and a chief justice’s warning becomes cover for inaction. That strategy is active, funded, and patient. So is the grassroots resistance. Reform is not coming from the top. It is being built from below — by us. Keep going.
🔷 The Path Forward — and Your Role In It
⚖️ How We Restore Accountability and Demand Supreme Court Reform
A Supreme Court without accountability doesn’t just fail the people — it actively transfers power from the many to the few.
This is why expanding the Court, establishing 18-year term limits, and adopting a binding ethics code with real enforcement aren’t radical demands. They are the minimum conditions for a judiciary that can legitimately claim equal justice under law.
Expand the Court to restore balance
Set term limits to end lifetime partisanship
Adopt a binding ethics code with real enforcement
Reform isn’t radical — it’s necessary.
Take Action: Tell Your Member of Congress: Expand the Supreme Court to protect our voting and civil rights, create term limits, and institute a code of ethics
Justice belongs to the people.
Together, we can champion our rights, freedoms, and democracy, hold our leaders accountable to the people’s will, and inspire voters to make a meaningful difference.
Laurie Woodward Garcia (paid with hugs and kisses, not bought by special interests) Leader, People Power United
People Power United | In this community, we will always speak out against racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, misogyny, sexism, ageism, ableism, sizeism, elitism, transphobia, misogynoir, and bigotry!
This is our moment to rise, resist, and reclaim our rights, freedoms, rule of law, and democracy. Millions of Americans are already refusing to back down — in the streets, at the ballot box, and in their communities.
Every movement that was ever won started with people who refused to quit. We are those people.
The future is not lost. It is being built — by us, right now.