Vice President Harris in a new interview expressed concern that the Supreme Court and its conservative majority could “undo recognized rights” after its 2022 ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“This court has shown itself to be an activist court,” Harris told The New York Times. “I worry about fundamental freedoms across the board.“
The vice president said she didn’t want to raise any specific legal precedents the court could overturn because she didn’t want to sound “alarmist.”
“But this court has made it very clear that they are willing to undo recognized rights,” she told the outlet.
“You could even look at Clarence Thomas saying a lot of the quiet part out loud,” she said. “Just look at what he said and then maybe that gives us some indication. Just look at one of the justices to see where they might go next.”
Harris has been the face of the White House’s response to the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and set the stage for several GOP-led states to enact strict abortion bans.
Her comments echoed President Biden’s own criticism of the Supreme Court, which in recent years has overturned precedent protecting the right to an abortion and upended affirmative action.
Thomas wrote in a separate opinion on the case that overturned Roe that the court “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents,” including the rulings that affirmed access to contraceptives and protected gay marriage.
“This is not a normal court,” Biden said last year following the affirmative action ruling.
“Take a look at how its ruled on a number of issues that have been precedent for 50, 60 years sometimes. And that’s what I meant by not normal,” the president said in a subsequent interview. “Across the board, the vast majority of the American people don’t agree with majority of decisions the court is making.”
