You know me as the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Over the past three years, I’ve tried changing the system from within. I’ve written increasingly urgent court opinions. I’ve even deployed symbolism. For President Trump’s second inauguration, I wore a massive cowrie-shell collar honoring my African ancestry and the strength and ingenuity it requires to overcome America’s darkest days. Nothing gets through to you people.
In the last court term, I wrote ten dissenting opinions, more than any other justice. Have you previewed the horror show on the docket for this term? Alito just winked at me and asked if it’s too soon to joke that I don’t have the brain processing power to do this job.
Other Supreme Court justices like to pretend that we’re an apolitical group who can be friends despite our fundamental ideological differences. We bond over a shared ability to stash our humanity inside the pockets of our robes like wads of damp Kleenex. Let the record reflect: I can’t stand these people. You won’t catch me riding shotgun in Neil Gorsuch’s midlife-crisis convertible. I’m not RSVPing yes to an e-vite for dinner at Clarence and Ginni Thomas’s house.
When I was a student at Harvard, I took drama classes and even performed in an improv troupe with the corny name, On Thin Ice. Your justice has layers. Of course, my favorite musical is the hopeful reimagining of America’s birth, Hamilton. The good news is I work in the room where it happens. The bad news is the room is in hell, and Amy Coney Barrett keeps trying to touch my cowrie shells.
Do you remember the Supreme Court’s decision on Trump v. CASA? It happened months ago, so you’ve probably already suppressed it like voting rights are about to be. My conservative colleagues ruled in favor of limiting federal judges’ ability to block the president’s executive orders from going into effect across the country, even if they’re unconstitutional. Hostile reminder: Federal judges have been the only barrier between President Trump and his quest to end birthright citizenship. Until the Fourteenth Amendment established birthright citizenship, Black people weren’t considered citizens, because of a little thing called slavery. I was so freaked out by the ruling that I wrote my own dissent separate from the other liberal justices. To quote myself, this will “surely hasten the downfall of our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise.”
Uh, helllooo?
Maybe you caught my footnote where I compared our new era of unchecked presidential power to Nazi Germany.
America, are you seriously not picking up what I’m putting down? I’m old enough to remember when everyone was like “believe Black women.”
When my conservative colleagues let the president lift humanitarian parole protections for more than 500,000 migrants, I wrote that they were “rendering constraints of law irrelevant and unleashing devastation.”
Maybe you’d pay more attention if I started a Substack.
I can hear you worrying that I’m not impartial. My identity as a Black woman has heightened my empathy for marginalized groups and sensitivity to the government’s abuses of power. This is unlike white male justices who never let their racial or gender identity affect their decision-making. You might concede that this great nation was founded on a heady mix of democratic ideals, misogyny, and racism. (I would’ve thrown in white supremacy, but I know that I’m already… wait for it… On Thin Ice.)
While you realize birthright citizenship and the Voting Rights Act were once imperative to make America less racist, all that has become as unnecessary to you as affirmative action since you think we now live in a colorblind society. For proof, you look no further than the fact that I, a Black woman, get to be a Supreme Court justice in these final days of democracy.
I’ve seen it all. I’m the only Supreme Court justice in history to have previously served as a public defender. I grew up in Miami, or as I call it, the shadows of Mar-a-Lago. I eat lunch every day with Brett Kavanaugh. When I tell you this is dire, believe me.
The old mantle clock of my hero, Justice Thurgood Marshall, is displayed in my office. I know that as he looks down on me from the heavenly respite he so richly deserves, he thinks: America is still litigating voting rights? The Fourteenth Amendment? Abortion? Kentaji, what in the actual fuck?
A Supreme Court justice really is just a cog in an irreparably corrupt system. And as we listen together to his clock’s hand tick each fleeting second, we’re comforted by the knowledge that soon enough there won’t be a Supreme Court left.
