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The number of bills answering the Supreme Court "will increase, no doubt, because as the Alito-Roberts court issues more and more decisions ... there are a variety of areas where they may take a stand that's far over on the ideological spectrum," said Caroline Fredrickson, Washington director for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Republicans have introduced a fair number of high court-response bills in recent years, with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) falling short in a March bid to reverse a 2001 ruling that barred the government from holding immigrants awaiting deportation for more than 6 months. Still, few in the GOP were sanguine about Democrats' chances to successfully undo this term's decisions.
"If Congress disagrees with the way a certain social decision is decided by the Supreme Court, Congress has the right" to address it legislatively, noted Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a former Judiciary chairman. "On the other hand, I don't see much chance of [the latest group of bills] passing."
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), in a brief interview, advised his colleagues to resist the urge to get involved in every ruling that creates a ripple effect of contention among concerned interest groups.
"There's a new way of doing things - if you lose in court, run to Congress to fix it," Graham said, adding that such an
approach effectively turns the legislature into a de facto court.
Georgetown Law School Professor Richard Lazarus, director of the university's Supreme Court Institute, disputed the appellation of bills responding to rulings as high court "fixes." Once the court has ruled, he said, lawmakers simply are changing the law that the justices had examined.
While he withheld judgment on whether the latest crop of bills constitutes a growing pattern of countering the court, Lazarus echoed predictions that few of the legislative remedies would make it to the president's desk.
"Almost every time a SCOTUS ruling comes down in different ways to interpret a statute, [parties in the suit] almost always find a champion on the Hill," Lazarus said. "It takes a lot of visibility to make it pass."
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