Normally, when I opened this show, I have a recommendation or to offer you and some thoughts, But today I don't because yesterday, as of this recording, nineteen children and two teachers were murdered in a val Day, Texas at rob Elementary School. The gunman was eighteen years old, and earlier in May he had bought two assault rifles. He used one of them to go into the school and commit an act of violence that we are all too familiar with, because it has been less than two weeks since another eighteen year old took an assault rifle and assorted weapons and armor and went into a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, and that one was racially motivated. He looked for the blackest zip code in upstate New York and wrote a manifesto, much of which was plagiarized, all of which was incredibly racist. As usual in the day after, politicians are offering their thoughts and their prayers, they are horrified, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, but we all know that they're lying. They've been sitting on a bill since March of that would mandate mandatory background checks for all gun purchases and Republicans refused to allow this bill to come to a vote. They refused to do the bare minimum. You know, at some point you run out of words because you've already said everything that could possibly be said. You know that there is no amount of death, there is no amount of suffering, no pictures of children that will move politicians to actually do the right thing. We also know that we can't afford despair and doing nothing. So we are all left in an incredibly difficult position of trying to figure out what to do to our world a better place, to make our schools safer, to allow children to no longer have to learn active shooter drills. I certainly wish I had all the answers, but I don't. But here with me today is someone who has a lot of answer certainly, and has done a lot of really important work in terms of trying to make the world a better place. So from Luminary, this is the Roxanne Gay Agenda, the Bad Feminist podcast of your Dreams. I am Roxanne Gay, your favorite bad feminist. On the Roxanne Gay Agenda, I talk about something that's on my mind, and then I talk with someone interesting to find out what's on their mind. And on this week's agenda, trying to find a way forward. The world is always intruding on us for one reason or another. But thankfully, when those intrusions and pinge on the civil rights of black people, the nub A c P is there and the Legal Defense and Educational Fund is their sword. Third Good Marshall was the founder of the LDF and its record of accomplishments include winning the landmark case Brown versus the Board of Education. They also represented Rosa Parks and Martin, Luther King and Birmingham and the Selma Marchers. Since Third Good Marshall, the LDF has been led by some heavy hitters, and the most recent is Sherylyn Eiffel. She has been at LDF since the eighties and she has led the organization for the past decade. She's intimately and effectively involved in issues of policy, accountability, mass incarceration, voting rights, housing, everywhere black people have been harmed by systemic racism. She's a frequent presence on cable news because she's excellent at explaining complex legal issues, and she also just stepped down as leader of the Legal Defense Funds. So I thought this would be a good time to check in with her not only about her career and the work she's doing, but also about the perilous state of our democracy which is under but like never before. Sherlyn Eifel, Welcome to the Roxanne Gay Agenda. I'm absolutely thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for having me else there. Heh, You're more than welcome. So, you know, today is one of those days that I think we have become all too familiar with. How do you stay engaged and continue to do the work you do knowing what we're up against on so many different friends. You know, I have my moments of absolute rage and you know, many despair. Um, if we're functioning sentient human beings, then days like this are incredibly hard. You feel like you can literally channel the pain that those parents are feeling involved in Texas, or that those family members are feeling in Buffalo. But you know, you're at work today, and this is what I do. You know, I get up and I go to work every day if it doesn't have to be physically. The work I do is to be a civil rights lawyer, to fight for the full citizenship and dignity of black people in this country. So no matter what happens. It's very rare that I take a day off from work. Some days it feels, you know, more joyous to be at work, you know, and other days it doesn't. But it's what I do. And so I will say I do believe in the future. I just do. I know that you always wanted to be a civil rights attorney, and then you did become one, and you are one now. So are you so single minded in all of your pursuits? No, I'm I'm work is kind of my sweet spot and I've never been unsure in that space. I do have very particular talents. I think I have vision. It's where I feel like all the cylinders that make up me are firing. Empathy and humanity and communication and deep, deep engagement in respect for history. And I remember when I was raising my kids, you know, I was eternally wringing my hands about whether, you know, I could be a better mom. Moms who just seemed to be so together. They had the schedule down pad, they always seemed cool and collected, they always said the right clothes. They seem to know things that I didn't know. And my best friend in Baltimore said to me, you are a decathlete in the decathlon, the the you know, for the running portion of the decathlon. That's not the fastest runner in the world, h right, But for somebody doing ten things at once, you know, trust me, you're a decatholete like you're maybe the best at doing the ten things that you do at the same time, right. And I have to say, it showed me out. It kind of calmed me down, um, because yeah, you know, no, I'm not the best at any one of those things likely, you know, but I'm pretty damn good at all of them. That's such a gift because I know that most especially women, because so much of caretaking is within our you know, purview for one reason or another. You know, when you take on a position like leading the Legal Defense Fund, you know what you're asking of the rest of the people in your life. Did you accomplish what you wanted to in your time with the Legal Defense Fund? And then, oh, that must feel so good to know I did my job. Yes, yes, you know, I honestly feel like I was given an assignment that I thought of as a divine assignment. You know, when Eric Garnett was killed that day, Yeah, I can't breathe that was a real thing happening in real time. Doesn't matter how big your docket is, how many cases you're you're carrying, what policy matters you were involved in. You have to meet that moment. But to speak to that moment and you'll be able to explain that moment. I understood the need to develop a kind of wrap of response capacity. I understood the need to expand our policy arm I knew that I wanted, because I had come from twenty years as a law professor, that I wanted to create an institute within LDF so we could do our own research. I knew that I wanted to have a management structure that had never existed before. It had always been a super top down, one person at the top. And the last board meeting, I pulled out for the board and shared with them the first report I had given them at our first annual board meeting. I had accomplished everything I said I wanted to do, and the most important thing, ross Anne was I described in that memo that I was determined to move the conversation and vision about civil rights work away from the edges and into the center of the conversation about this democracy m price work is not something that we do over here to get things for black people. It actually is about the health of your democracy. We actually have a better lens to see the cracks in the foundation of our democracy than maybe any others. And that was that was one of my goals, was to re calibrate where we sit in the conversation about this country. How do we hold that center, because I know that that's one of the most critical things that we can do moving forward. And I think this applies frankly to all civil rights like these are not just civil rights for various groups. It actually ensures everyone has you know, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. So how do we hold the center? I think there are lots of elements to it, centering the conversation about equality, for example, not allowing this country to take for free what we have given it in terms of its image of itself and its reputation. I talk often about a case that um LBF one in the Supreme Port in nineteen see. The case was argued on behalf of a white woman, Idah Phillips, who was challenging the then policy at Martin Marietta. Martin Marietta wouldn't hire her because they did not hire women with preschool aged children, And LDF argued and won that case in the United States Supreme Court. Do you think that women in corporate America who have preschool aged children are walking around saying, you know, I owe this all to LDF black lawyer Bill Robinson. They don't even know how that happened. They couldn't even know that it took this black legacy civil rights organization who recognized the importance of that equality principle, represented a white woman and outlawed the policy of not hiring women who have preschool aged children. So I know that people don't even know how they're doing what they're doing right now, and I'm determined to make sure that generations going forward will know. I say this about the civil rights movement All the time, we gave America the story, you know that America's place of opportunity and equality and so what you couldn't say that before, Yes, you couldn't. I think a lot of people really hold onto that narrative of America as this place of opportunity. Even yesterday, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, one of these pundits said that as challenging as things can sometimes be in this country, it is still by far the best place in the world. And I was like, you know, sometimes you see someone say some crazy stuff on Twitter and you're like, that's really wild. Surely you didn't mean that they're going to delete it. But he not only kept that tweet up, he doubled and tripled down. And it was interesting to see how pervasive this myth of American exceptionalism is that in the wake of profound tragedy and profound anger and grief, the best thing he could say was We're still a great country. Do you find, ever that you have to push back against that narrative about an exceptionalism and how do you do so? All the time? And I and I I pushed back against it gleefully because I believe in the future I also could have made millions of dollars, you know, absolutely, because I believe in it. It gives me joy and pleasure to feel like I am a part of making this country better. I talk often about being having been inspired by Barbara Jordan and during the Watergate hearings and hearing seeing this black woman, impressive black woman with this voice talk about Duck Constitution and how you know, I'm a sucker for those things. And to be a lawyer is to sign up in the possibilities of the legal system to make change happen. Right, So I think of us as profoundly optimistic people, you know, and that we're using the available tools and apparatus to try to change the country and make the country better. A day when nineteen children are massacred in the classroom is a day when we are operating below our ideal period. Doesn't matter what you think of this country, that can't be like part of the mix. And I got to be able to have the courage to confront that. And I think that problem is that this warped idea of what patriotism is. Those of us who are you know, daughters and sons of immigrants. We're always trying to honor the journey, you know, and before us, who who you know, struggled and who believed and who made sacrifices. We understand what the possibilities are. But as I was saying earlier, we have also lived as black Americans, and so we can see the flaws and the craps and the foundation and guess what you should want to have us share what we know, because when the foundation crumbles, we're all gonna be under the rubble. You think it's gonna just crumble on black people. I would think the last few years would have helped Americans understand that when this democracy unravels, the whole thing unraveled, and we'll all be profoundly affected by it. It's not going to be something that you can isolate yourself from. Which, unfortunately, especially in a lot of the political rhetoric we've seen, you get the distinct impression that they believe that these are the problems of those people over there. Just like in Louisiana the governor saying that our birth rate is fine if you correct our population and exclude black women, and you think, wow, thank you for saying the quiet part out loud, Thank you out loud. There are significant numbers of leaders in this country who are leaders, yes, and they frankly would prefer we go back there. No matter what they see, they are bound to see the world as a segregated one. They haven't bought into the idea that American nous is a thing that you can have access to unless you are Christian. And why and you know, whatever their things and what I what I hear people have these kind of this kind of distress about the change happening in the country. You know, you know what you have a problem with. You don't actually have a problem with me. You don't even have a problem with black people. You have a problem with the fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution because we actually reset this country after the Civil War with the thirteenth a man in which end of flavery. The fourteen Amendment, the first line is about birthright citizenship and naturalized citizenship. The first line of it created the America that you see today, including all these people who want to tell you about their great grandparents who came over from Italy or from Poland or whatever in one generation. In one generation, you were American because of the first line of the fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which was actually created to make sure that black people were citizens, oh for sure. And you know, one of the things that's most interesting is we see a lot of veneration of the Constitution, but there's this very selected reading and interpretation. And then when it comes to things like the Second Amendment, and I would say also the First Amendment, the definition of it, like the terms of those amendments shift based on political interests, and you know, you think, wow, we know what it says. And I believe that the Second Amendment is twenty seven words and there's nowhere in there doesn't say that you shouldn't be means tested or have a background check, or that perhaps certain types of weapons, you know, like basic things like I mean, because they were talking about muskets and it took a hell of a lot of effort to fire even one bullet, and so sure, go ahead, own one. I can outrun that. And so now the Supreme Court is adjudicating a lot of the issues that affect our very lives, and it purports to not be a political institution. Do you think it's appropriate for the Supreme Court to act like it's not a political institution when frankly, the people who even sit on it are political appoint I don't. I don't agree with the fact that you can suddenly turn yourself into this impartial thing overnight, right, But I do believe it is again a constitutional imperative. Do process requires that you have that you face an impartial tribunal, So you are constitutionally entitled to have your case adjudicated by an impartial decision maker, jury, or judge. Then you have to ask yourself, well, what does impartiality looks like. It means that I am open, even if I have thoughts, I am open to hearing what the evidence is, or in the case of the Spreme Court, reading the briefs and hearing the arguments and being open to the arguments. It means that I'm so wedded to that that I'm gonna write an opinion describing why I reached the conclusion I reached, because that opinion helps keep me honest, because I have to be able to create a logical narrative that explains, in accordance with the law, why I reached the decision I reach. And so we want justices to write their opinions so that they actually have to adhere to a logical and defensible narrative that we can see. These are all elements of impartiality. The other element of impartiality is that not only are you required to be impartial as a judge, but you must also have the appearance of impartiality. That's uder for life. Whether a judge is refused from a case, right, they're they're perfectly impartial. They're like a you know, wonderful person, but the plaintiff is their cousin. Right, There are all kinds of ways in which you might think that the impartiality of a particular jurist m is impune. And I think that's the place where we're in trouble at this moment, where we have tossed out the appearance of impartiality standard, at least on the Supreme Court, and then it gets very hard Roxanne for them not to look a little mounds. Yeah, I agree. I've been really thinking quite a lot, like many people about the Supreme Court in recent weeks, because of the leak decision on overturning Roe v. Wade with the case in Mississippi, and of course as we look at the Second Amendment case that they are currently contemplating with regard to carry permits in New York. Uh. You know, they have quite a lot of power, and at the same time, there's a lot of handwringing because of the leak of the draft and the fact that so many people are so incensed about you know, literally more than half of the population's bodily autonomy being taken from them. You know, there are people that are implying on both sides of the aisle, that the Court is facing a crisis of confidence and that people are losing faith in the court. Though I think if you ask different kinds of people, the faith in the courts was never there. So do you think that there is a crisis of confidence in the courts or should wed? And I know they're trying to say that there isn't. And I mean, I'll just give two examples really from these past few weeks for months, let's talk about the you know, the Mississippi case and the Texas case. The Texas case that really basically sets up you know, your neighbors to themselves sue you, you know, for for trying to get an abortion, basically creating a bounty for women's seking abortion and those who would help them. That clearly violates ro versus Wade. So the fact that the Court would allow that law to go forward. Let's let's assume the Court is planning to overturn Roe versus Wade in the Jobs Mississippi case, which now we know haven't seen the lead opinion that they are, but the Texas case came to them last fall and they haven't yet decided the Jobs case, and so Roll Versus Wade remains good law, and what's good law? Then I think we've not spent enough time on the absolute scandal of the Supreme Court essentially allowing a state to vi elate the constitutional rights of half the population and by doing so, invite other states to do the same. That is shocking when we talk about respect for the court. The court has to respect itself. Don't mock your own precedent Roll versus Wade, which is still the law of the land. That you basically allowed a state to violate that constitutional principle and basically invited other states to do so by not stopping it, and that means that you are a participant in the members of the public not respecting the Court's precedents because you didn't respect them. It's incredibly corrosive of the legitimacy of the Court, and so they have to take responsibility for those things and and acknowledge them instead of making everyone feel like we are imagining the fact that they are undercutting their own legitimacy by sort of saying, we know this is the law, but go ahead and break it. Go ahead and break it. Go ahead and break it. We're gonna get around to it anyway sometime next So why don't you go ahead and start breaking it? Now? What in the hell where did we learn that? What law school is that taught in? What is going on? And then to have various members come out and give these speeches that you know, somehow they are being bullied. We can't even make you adhere to a code of ethics. So you're not being bullied. You're the most powerful institution in this country. Thank you have power since Marbury versus Madison to say what the law is. That's huge in the most powerful country in the world. So stop number one, but number two, stop with the gas lighting, like don't don't, don't play these games. You're doing that by not respecting your own precedent. So I think there are things like that that really bear some really really serious conversation and examination that something's off the rails there, that they were not able and that the leadership was not able to say, well, listen, whatever, we're gonn dude, this is not how we do it. We are the United States Supreme Court President matters and and and to have abandoned that seems to me incredibly reckless. In not two, the Spring Court of course, issued one of the worst decisions, in my view, in the history of the United States, Spring Courts Shelby County versus Folder, which is a decision that UM undermined the key provision of the Voting Rights Act, which actually set off this wave of voter suppression that we've been seeing since then. Prior thirteen, almost all of the states in the South, as well as other directed boroughs in New York and counties in California, New Hampshire and so forth, had to submit any voting changes that they wanted to make to a federal authority for approval to make sure that it doesn't discriminate against black, Latino Asian American Native American voters. This was the core provision of the Voting Rights Act of nine, which you know has been called the crown jewel of civil rights statutes. Right. So Justice Robertson in the majority opinion pretty much guts that and out there's no preclearance formula. That is, you know, no jurisdictions have to submit changes. They can just make them right. So all these states go crazy, and that's what we've seen happen. But what the report said and that Shelby decision was but you still have this other provision of the Voting Rights Act, Section two, and Section two is the provision we use um to sue for voting practices that are discriminatory. And they said, you still got that tool, right, great, And so we've been bringing Section two cases and winning a bunch of them, challenged voter i d laws on the Section two. Courts have found that that some of these laws were passed to intentionally discriminate, and so forth. Last summer, the court size the case is called Bernovitch versus Democratic Party of Arizona, And in that case, the writer of the decision is Justice Alito, And anyone who hands the pen to Justice Alito to write a case involving a civil rights statute knows what they're doing. And Justice Alito essentially rewrites the standards for how Section two cases are to be assessed. And he does it in the middle of the fact that we're litigating all these Section two cases challenging these voter suppression laws. Basically, this Supreme Court that's supposed to want to be so restrained, that believes only in the text and the original intent, decides to just right themselves how they think these cases should be evaluated UM and power grab basically over what Congress said was the appropriate set of standards that should be used. That's a powerful moment. And I wrote a piece that was in the New York Review of Books a couple of weeks ago about the relationship between what the Court is doing around abortion uh and what the Court's doing around voting, and in particular, in the draft opinion UM Justice Alito's statement that you know, women are not without political power. We now return this issue to the states, where all women can exercise their electoral power and decide themselves whether they want this Abortion Act is to go forward. And so I wrote about the intense cynicism of that right of pretending that you're not aiding and abetting the restrictions on the right to vote for black and Latino women right while you're saying women have political power. The cynicism of that is unreal. It's kind of staggering when you think about it. It is so here you are actively diminishing uh, leaving the door opened for the diminishment of of the voting strength of black women and Latino women. And then you're gonna say in Dobbs women, you know, and so the poor center of my pieces, to which women is justice of letal referring when he says not without political power, now, I leave it all in your hands. So there's some some real cynical stuff happening that also undermines a sense of confidence that this is all on the up and up, you know. Speaking of politics, Democrats, though not Biden, have floated the idea of expanding the court beyond nine justices. It's been done several times before throughout history. Do you think that that is a legitimate way of approaching some of the issues that we're facing with such a profoundly unbalanced court. So I was asked to join president by the Supreme Court Commission, and I did join it. I was the only person actively leading in organization that litigates before the Court, and I did it because I think that this conversation is not for bolting, is the point, right. I didn't um stake out my views on that particular issue, but it is perfectly appropriate to have a conversation about the size of the court, about court ethics, about court recusal. That is not bullying the court. You know, court does not and I've been saying this over and over again, it does not sit above our democracy, it sits within it. It may be at the top of the food chain, but it's still under the covering of our democracy. And Congress has the power to regulate the size of the court. Nine is not magic. You know, We've had six member court before. I would remind people that we had an eight member court after Justice Scalia passed away, and Mitch McConnell and the Republicans were prepared to keep the Court that way. And I think there's something kind of weird right about deciding that one political party can decide how many members are on the Supreme Court. At one point we had seven members on the Court, as I recalled for a brief period of time, and the idea that having this conversation is an assault on the court or should compel us to flutch our pearls. I joined the commission because I thought, Wow, we're doing an actual piece of scholarly work, and this is how it should be done in stages um. The conversation should happen in places that are not just political spaces. It was a bipartisan commission. There were disagreements among you know, members, right, and I thought that's great. We should be having this kind of conversation and if that's what it comes to and that's what Congress decides, that will be what Congress decides. And people should stop pretending that it means the end of the republic when people were perfectly prepared to accept one political party deciding that we would have eight members until they controlled the presidency again, and they were open about it. They were like loud, they were quite open. And if you know people who you can google it. And the more the court, members of the court, I won't say the court, I'll say members of the court come out and offer these truculent speeches about how they're being bullied, and we won't. I mean, I have to be honest. I'm I'm kind of a sucker for a little bit of mystery about it makes them sound silly. Yeah, it's like, just just speak to us from the court, from the bench. We don't need to know all your thoughts. Yeah, really, honestly, it only makes it worse. We see, things can be improved, including in ethics, including in as I was just discussing the appearance of impartiality. They can improve, just like everyone. And when they stop making these speeches suggesting that they think they are above critique or above improvement. That actually serves to further underpet confidence in the court, because it is alarming. That is not the speech of leaders in a democracy. Sherilyn Eiffeel, you are forced to be reckoned with. Thank you so much for joining me on The Rock Sande Gay Agenda. Well, first of all, I just want to say how glad I am that I had to be on this show, and I'm so sorry that such a tragedy has occurred. And then we've didn't talk about pop culture because yes, that would be That's my dream, That's all I ever really want to talk about, and every time something happens, I'm like, y times, I got you. We will have that conversation and it will be great. You can keep up with me and the podcast on social media on Twitter at r k and Instagram at Roxanne by four. Our email is Rosanne Day Agenda at gmail dot com from Luminary the Rock. Sane Day Agenda is produced by Curtis Fox. Our researchers Yes send you Mareno, and production support is provided by Caitlin Adams and Meg Pillow. I am Rosann Gay, your favorite bad feminist. Thank you for listening.

Normally, when I opened this show, I have a recommendation or to offer you and some thoughts, But today I don't because yesterday, as of this recording, nineteen children and two teachers were murdered in a val Day, Texas at rob Elementary School. The gunman was eighteen years old, and earlier in May he had bought two assault rifles. He used one of them to go into the school and commit an act of violence that we are all too familiar with, because it has been less than two weeks since another eighteen year old took an assault rifle and assorted weapons and armor and went into a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, and that one was racially motivated. He looked for the blackest zip code in upstate New York and wrote a manifesto, much of which was plagiarized, all of which was incredibly racist. As usual in the day after, politicians are offering their thoughts and their prayers, they are horrified, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, but we all know that they're lying. They've been sitting on a bill since March of that would mandate mandatory background checks for all gun purchases and Republicans refused to allow this bill to come to a vote. They refused to do the bare minimum. You know, at some point you run out of words because you've already said everything that could possibly be said. You know that there is no amount of death, there is no amount of suffering, no pictures of children that will move politicians to actually do the right thing. We also know that we can't afford despair and doing nothing. So we are all left in an incredibly difficult position of trying to figure out what to do to our world a better place, to make our schools safer, to allow children to no longer have to learn active shooter drills. I certainly wish I had all the answers, but I don't. But here with me today is someone who has a lot of answer certainly, and has done a lot of really important work in terms of trying to make the world a better place. So from Luminary, this is the Roxanne Gay Agenda, the Bad Feminist podcast of your Dreams. I am Roxanne Gay, your favorite bad feminist. On the Roxanne Gay Agenda, I talk about something that's on my mind, and then I talk with someone interesting to find out what's on their mind. And on this week's agenda, trying to find a way forward. The world is always intruding on us for one reason or another. But thankfully, when those intrusions and pinge on the civil rights of black people, the nub A c P is there and the Legal Defense and Educational Fund is their sword. Third Good Marshall was the founder of the LDF and its record of accomplishments include winning the landmark case Brown versus the Board of Education. They also represented Rosa Parks and Martin, Luther King and Birmingham and the Selma Marchers. Since Third Good Marshall, the LDF has been led by some heavy hitters, and the most recent is Sherylyn Eiffel. She has been at LDF since the eighties and she has led the organization for the past decade. She's intimately and effectively involved in issues of policy, accountability, mass incarceration, voting rights, housing, everywhere black people have been harmed by systemic racism. She's a frequent presence on cable news because she's excellent at explaining complex legal issues, and she also just stepped down as leader of the Legal Defense Funds. So I thought this would be a good time to check in with her not only about her career and the work she's doing, but also about the perilous state of our democracy which is under but like never before. Sherlyn Eifel, Welcome to the Roxanne Gay Agenda. I'm absolutely thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for having me else there. Heh, You're more than welcome. So, you know, today is one of those days that I think we have become all too familiar with. How do you stay engaged and continue to do the work you do knowing what we're up against on so many different friends. You know, I have my moments of absolute rage and you know, many despair. Um, if we're functioning sentient human beings, then days like this are incredibly hard. You feel like you can literally channel the pain that those parents are feeling involved in Texas, or that those family members are feeling in Buffalo. But you know, you're at work today, and this is what I do. You know, I get up and I go to work every day if it doesn't have to be physically. The work I do is to be a civil rights lawyer, to fight for the full citizenship and dignity of black people in this country. So no matter what happens. It's very rare that I take a day off from work. Some days it feels, you know, more joyous to be at work, you know, and other days it doesn't. But it's what I do. And so I will say I do believe in the future. I just do. I know that you always wanted to be a civil rights attorney, and then you did become one, and you are one now. So are you so single minded in all of your pursuits? No, I'm I'm work is kind of my sweet spot and I've never been unsure in that space. I do have very particular talents. I think I have vision. It's where I feel like all the cylinders that make up me are firing. Empathy and humanity and communication and deep, deep engagement in respect for history. And I remember when I was raising my kids, you know, I was eternally wringing my hands about whether, you know, I could be a better mom. Moms who just seemed to be so together. They had the schedule down pad, they always seemed cool and collected, they always said the right clothes. They seem to know things that I didn't know. And my best friend in Baltimore said to me, you are a decathlete in the decathlon, the the you know, for the running portion of the decathlon. That's not the fastest runner in the world, h right, But for somebody doing ten things at once, you know, trust me, you're a decatholete like you're maybe the best at doing the ten things that you do at the same time, right. And I have to say, it showed me out. It kind of calmed me down, um, because yeah, you know, no, I'm not the best at any one of those things likely, you know, but I'm pretty damn good at all of them. That's such a gift because I know that most especially women, because so much of caretaking is within our you know, purview for one reason or another. You know, when you take on a position like leading the Legal Defense Fund, you know what you're asking of the rest of the people in your life. Did you accomplish what you wanted to in your time with the Legal Defense Fund? And then, oh, that must feel so good to know I did my job. Yes, yes, you know, I honestly feel like I was given an assignment that I thought of as a divine assignment. You know, when Eric Garnett was killed that day, Yeah, I can't breathe that was a real thing happening in real time. Doesn't matter how big your docket is, how many cases you're you're carrying, what policy matters you were involved in. You have to meet that moment. But to speak to that moment and you'll be able to explain that moment. I understood the need to develop a kind of wrap of response capacity. I understood the need to expand our policy arm I knew that I wanted, because I had come from twenty years as a law professor, that I wanted to create an institute within LDF so we could do our own research. I knew that I wanted to have a management structure that had never existed before. It had always been a super top down, one person at the top. And the last board meeting, I pulled out for the board and shared with them the first report I had given them at our first annual board meeting. I had accomplished everything I said I wanted to do, and the most important thing, ross Anne was I described in that memo that I was determined to move the conversation and vision about civil rights work away from the edges and into the center of the conversation about this democracy m price work is not something that we do over here to get things for black people. It actually is about the health of your democracy. We actually have a better lens to see the cracks in the foundation of our democracy than maybe any others. And that was that was one of my goals, was to re calibrate where we sit in the conversation about this country. How do we hold that center, because I know that that's one of the most critical things that we can do moving forward. And I think this applies frankly to all civil rights like these are not just civil rights for various groups. It actually ensures everyone has you know, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. So how do we hold the center? I think there are lots of elements to it, centering the conversation about equality, for example, not allowing this country to take for free what we have given it in terms of its image of itself and its reputation. I talk often about a case that um LBF one in the Supreme Port in nineteen see. The case was argued on behalf of a white woman, Idah Phillips, who was challenging the then policy at Martin Marietta. Martin Marietta wouldn't hire her because they did not hire women with preschool aged children, And LDF argued and won that case in the United States Supreme Court. Do you think that women in corporate America who have preschool aged children are walking around saying, you know, I owe this all to LDF black lawyer Bill Robinson. They don't even know how that happened. They couldn't even know that it took this black legacy civil rights organization who recognized the importance of that equality principle, represented a white woman and outlawed the policy of not hiring women who have preschool aged children. So I know that people don't even know how they're doing what they're doing right now, and I'm determined to make sure that generations going forward will know. I say this about the civil rights movement All the time, we gave America the story, you know that America's place of opportunity and equality and so what you couldn't say that before, Yes, you couldn't. I think a lot of people really hold onto that narrative of America as this place of opportunity. Even yesterday, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, one of these pundits said that as challenging as things can sometimes be in this country, it is still by far the best place in the world. And I was like, you know, sometimes you see someone say some crazy stuff on Twitter and you're like, that's really wild. Surely you didn't mean that they're going to delete it. But he not only kept that tweet up, he doubled and tripled down. And it was interesting to see how pervasive this myth of American exceptionalism is that in the wake of profound tragedy and profound anger and grief, the best thing he could say was We're still a great country. Do you find, ever that you have to push back against that narrative about an exceptionalism and how do you do so? All the time? And I and I I pushed back against it gleefully because I believe in the future I also could have made millions of dollars, you know, absolutely, because I believe in it. It gives me joy and pleasure to feel like I am a part of making this country better. I talk often about being having been inspired by Barbara Jordan and during the Watergate hearings and hearing seeing this black woman, impressive black woman with this voice talk about Duck Constitution and how you know, I'm a sucker for those things. And to be a lawyer is to sign up in the possibilities of the legal system to make change happen. Right, So I think of us as profoundly optimistic people, you know, and that we're using the available tools and apparatus to try to change the country and make the country better. A day when nineteen children are massacred in the classroom is a day when we are operating below our ideal period. Doesn't matter what you think of this country, that can't be like part of the mix. And I got to be able to have the courage to confront that. And I think that problem is that this warped idea of what patriotism is. Those of us who are you know, daughters and sons of immigrants. We're always trying to honor the journey, you know, and before us, who who you know, struggled and who believed and who made sacrifices. We understand what the possibilities are. But as I was saying earlier, we have also lived as black Americans, and so we can see the flaws and the craps and the foundation and guess what you should want to have us share what we know, because when the foundation crumbles, we're all gonna be under the rubble. You think it's gonna just crumble on black people. I would think the last few years would have helped Americans understand that when this democracy unravels, the whole thing unraveled, and we'll all be profoundly affected by it. It's not going to be something that you can isolate yourself from. Which, unfortunately, especially in a lot of the political rhetoric we've seen, you get the distinct impression that they believe that these are the problems of those people over there. Just like in Louisiana the governor saying that our birth rate is fine if you correct our population and exclude black women, and you think, wow, thank you for saying the quiet part out loud, Thank you out loud. There are significant numbers of leaders in this country who are leaders, yes, and they frankly would prefer we go back there. No matter what they see, they are bound to see the world as a segregated one. They haven't bought into the idea that American nous is a thing that you can have access to unless you are Christian. And why and you know, whatever their things and what I what I hear people have these kind of this kind of distress about the change happening in the country. You know, you know what you have a problem with. You don't actually have a problem with me. You don't even have a problem with black people. You have a problem with the fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution because we actually reset this country after the Civil War with the thirteenth a man in which end of flavery. The fourteen Amendment, the first line is about birthright citizenship and naturalized citizenship. The first line of it created the America that you see today, including all these people who want to tell you about their great grandparents who came over from Italy or from Poland or whatever in one generation. In one generation, you were American because of the first line of the fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which was actually created to make sure that black people were citizens, oh for sure. And you know, one of the things that's most interesting is we see a lot of veneration of the Constitution, but there's this very selected reading and interpretation. And then when it comes to things like the Second Amendment, and I would say also the First Amendment, the definition of it, like the terms of those amendments shift based on political interests, and you know, you think, wow, we know what it says. And I believe that the Second Amendment is twenty seven words and there's nowhere in there doesn't say that you shouldn't be means tested or have a background check, or that perhaps certain types of weapons, you know, like basic things like I mean, because they were talking about muskets and it took a hell of a lot of effort to fire even one bullet, and so sure, go ahead, own one. I can outrun that. And so now the Supreme Court is adjudicating a lot of the issues that affect our very lives, and it purports to not be a political institution. Do you think it's appropriate for the Supreme Court to act like it's not a political institution when frankly, the people who even sit on it are political appoint I don't. I don't agree with the fact that you can suddenly turn yourself into this impartial thing overnight, right, But I do believe it is again a constitutional imperative. Do process requires that you have that you face an impartial tribunal, So you are constitutionally entitled to have your case adjudicated by an impartial decision maker, jury, or judge. Then you have to ask yourself, well, what does impartiality looks like. It means that I am open, even if I have thoughts, I am open to hearing what the evidence is, or in the case of the Spreme Court, reading the briefs and hearing the arguments and being open to the arguments. It means that I'm so wedded to that that I'm gonna write an opinion describing why I reached the conclusion I reached, because that opinion helps keep me honest, because I have to be able to create a logical narrative that explains, in accordance with the law, why I reached the decision I reach. And so we want justices to write their opinions so that they actually have to adhere to a logical and defensible narrative that we can see. These are all elements of impartiality. The other element of impartiality is that not only are you required to be impartial as a judge, but you must also have the appearance of impartiality. That's uder for life. Whether a judge is refused from a case, right, they're they're perfectly impartial. They're like a you know, wonderful person, but the plaintiff is their cousin. Right, There are all kinds of ways in which you might think that the impartiality of a particular jurist m is impune. And I think that's the place where we're in trouble at this moment, where we have tossed out the appearance of impartiality standard, at least on the Supreme Court, and then it gets very hard Roxanne for them not to look a little mounds. Yeah, I agree. I've been really thinking quite a lot, like many people about the Supreme Court in recent weeks, because of the leak decision on overturning Roe v. Wade with the case in Mississippi, and of course as we look at the Second Amendment case that they are currently contemplating with regard to carry permits in New York. Uh. You know, they have quite a lot of power, and at the same time, there's a lot of handwringing because of the leak of the draft and the fact that so many people are so incensed about you know, literally more than half of the population's bodily autonomy being taken from them. You know, there are people that are implying on both sides of the aisle, that the Court is facing a crisis of confidence and that people are losing faith in the court. Though I think if you ask different kinds of people, the faith in the courts was never there. So do you think that there is a crisis of confidence in the courts or should wed? And I know they're trying to say that there isn't. And I mean, I'll just give two examples really from these past few weeks for months, let's talk about the you know, the Mississippi case and the Texas case. The Texas case that really basically sets up you know, your neighbors to themselves sue you, you know, for for trying to get an abortion, basically creating a bounty for women's seking abortion and those who would help them. That clearly violates ro versus Wade. So the fact that the Court would allow that law to go forward. Let's let's assume the Court is planning to overturn Roe versus Wade in the Jobs Mississippi case, which now we know haven't seen the lead opinion that they are, but the Texas case came to them last fall and they haven't yet decided the Jobs case, and so Roll Versus Wade remains good law, and what's good law? Then I think we've not spent enough time on the absolute scandal of the Supreme Court essentially allowing a state to vi elate the constitutional rights of half the population and by doing so, invite other states to do the same. That is shocking when we talk about respect for the court. The court has to respect itself. Don't mock your own precedent Roll versus Wade, which is still the law of the land. That you basically allowed a state to violate that constitutional principle and basically invited other states to do so by not stopping it, and that means that you are a participant in the members of the public not respecting the Court's precedents because you didn't respect them. It's incredibly corrosive of the legitimacy of the Court, and so they have to take responsibility for those things and and acknowledge them instead of making everyone feel like we are imagining the fact that they are undercutting their own legitimacy by sort of saying, we know this is the law, but go ahead and break it. Go ahead and break it. Go ahead and break it. We're gonna get around to it anyway sometime next So why don't you go ahead and start breaking it? Now? What in the hell where did we learn that? What law school is that taught in? What is going on? And then to have various members come out and give these speeches that you know, somehow they are being bullied. We can't even make you adhere to a code of ethics. So you're not being bullied. You're the most powerful institution in this country. Thank you have power since Marbury versus Madison to say what the law is. That's huge in the most powerful country in the world. So stop number one, but number two, stop with the gas lighting, like don't don't, don't play these games. You're doing that by not respecting your own precedent. So I think there are things like that that really bear some really really serious conversation and examination that something's off the rails there, that they were not able and that the leadership was not able to say, well, listen, whatever, we're gonn dude, this is not how we do it. We are the United States Supreme Court President matters and and and to have abandoned that seems to me incredibly reckless. In not two, the Spring Court of course, issued one of the worst decisions, in my view, in the history of the United States, Spring Courts Shelby County versus Folder, which is a decision that UM undermined the key provision of the Voting Rights Act, which actually set off this wave of voter suppression that we've been seeing since then. Prior thirteen, almost all of the states in the South, as well as other directed boroughs in New York and counties in California, New Hampshire and so forth, had to submit any voting changes that they wanted to make to a federal authority for approval to make sure that it doesn't discriminate against black, Latino Asian American Native American voters. This was the core provision of the Voting Rights Act of nine, which you know has been called the crown jewel of civil rights statutes. Right. So Justice Robertson in the majority opinion pretty much guts that and out there's no preclearance formula. That is, you know, no jurisdictions have to submit changes. They can just make them right. So all these states go crazy, and that's what we've seen happen. But what the report said and that Shelby decision was but you still have this other provision of the Voting Rights Act, Section two, and Section two is the provision we use um to sue for voting practices that are discriminatory. And they said, you still got that tool, right, great, And so we've been bringing Section two cases and winning a bunch of them, challenged voter i d laws on the Section two. Courts have found that that some of these laws were passed to intentionally discriminate, and so forth. Last summer, the court size the case is called Bernovitch versus Democratic Party of Arizona, And in that case, the writer of the decision is Justice Alito, And anyone who hands the pen to Justice Alito to write a case involving a civil rights statute knows what they're doing. And Justice Alito essentially rewrites the standards for how Section two cases are to be assessed. And he does it in the middle of the fact that we're litigating all these Section two cases challenging these voter suppression laws. Basically, this Supreme Court that's supposed to want to be so restrained, that believes only in the text and the original intent, decides to just right themselves how they think these cases should be evaluated UM and power grab basically over what Congress said was the appropriate set of standards that should be used. That's a powerful moment. And I wrote a piece that was in the New York Review of Books a couple of weeks ago about the relationship between what the Court is doing around abortion uh and what the Court's doing around voting, and in particular, in the draft opinion UM Justice Alito's statement that you know, women are not without political power. We now return this issue to the states, where all women can exercise their electoral power and decide themselves whether they want this Abortion Act is to go forward. And so I wrote about the intense cynicism of that right of pretending that you're not aiding and abetting the restrictions on the right to vote for black and Latino women right while you're saying women have political power. The cynicism of that is unreal. It's kind of staggering when you think about it. It is so here you are actively diminishing uh, leaving the door opened for the diminishment of of the voting strength of black women and Latino women. And then you're gonna say in Dobbs women, you know, and so the poor center of my pieces, to which women is justice of letal referring when he says not without political power, now, I leave it all in your hands. So there's some some real cynical stuff happening that also undermines a sense of confidence that this is all on the up and up, you know. Speaking of politics, Democrats, though not Biden, have floated the idea of expanding the court beyond nine justices. It's been done several times before throughout history. Do you think that that is a legitimate way of approaching some of the issues that we're facing with such a profoundly unbalanced court. So I was asked to join president by the Supreme Court Commission, and I did join it. I was the only person actively leading in organization that litigates before the Court, and I did it because I think that this conversation is not for bolting, is the point, right. I didn't um stake out my views on that particular issue, but it is perfectly appropriate to have a conversation about the size of the court, about court ethics, about court recusal. That is not bullying the court. You know, court does not and I've been saying this over and over again, it does not sit above our democracy, it sits within it. It may be at the top of the food chain, but it's still under the covering of our democracy. And Congress has the power to regulate the size of the court. Nine is not magic. You know, We've had six member court before. I would remind people that we had an eight member court after Justice Scalia passed away, and Mitch McConnell and the Republicans were prepared to keep the Court that way. And I think there's something kind of weird right about deciding that one political party can decide how many members are on the Supreme Court. At one point we had seven members on the Court, as I recalled for a brief period of time, and the idea that having this conversation is an assault on the court or should compel us to flutch our pearls. I joined the commission because I thought, Wow, we're doing an actual piece of scholarly work, and this is how it should be done in stages um. The conversation should happen in places that are not just political spaces. It was a bipartisan commission. There were disagreements among you know, members, right, and I thought that's great. We should be having this kind of conversation and if that's what it comes to and that's what Congress decides, that will be what Congress decides. And people should stop pretending that it means the end of the republic when people were perfectly prepared to accept one political party deciding that we would have eight members until they controlled the presidency again, and they were open about it. They were like loud, they were quite open. And if you know people who you can google it. And the more the court, members of the court, I won't say the court, I'll say members of the court come out and offer these truculent speeches about how they're being bullied, and we won't. I mean, I have to be honest. I'm I'm kind of a sucker for a little bit of mystery about it makes them sound silly. Yeah, it's like, just just speak to us from the court, from the bench. We don't need to know all your thoughts. Yeah, really, honestly, it only makes it worse. We see, things can be improved, including in ethics, including in as I was just discussing the appearance of impartiality. They can improve, just like everyone. And when they stop making these speeches suggesting that they think they are above critique or above improvement. That actually serves to further underpet confidence in the court, because it is alarming. That is not the speech of leaders in a democracy. Sherilyn Eiffeel, you are forced to be reckoned with. Thank you so much for joining me on The Rock Sande Gay Agenda. Well, first of all, I just want to say how glad I am that I had to be on this show, and I'm so sorry that such a tragedy has occurred. And then we've didn't talk about pop culture because yes, that would be That's my dream, That's all I ever really want to talk about, and every time something happens, I'm like, y times, I got you. We will have that conversation and it will be great. You can keep up with me and the podcast on social media on Twitter at r k and Instagram at Roxanne by four. Our email is Rosanne Day Agenda at gmail dot com from Luminary the Rock. Sane Day Agenda is produced by Curtis Fox. Our researchers Yes send you Mareno, and production support is provided by Caitlin Adams and Meg Pillow. I am Rosann Gay, your favorite bad feminist. Thank you for listening.