Founded in November 2014 and based in Washington, DC, Fix The Court (FTC) describes itself as “a national, non-partisan grassroots organization” whose mission is “to take the Supreme Court to task for its lack of accountability and transparency.”
Specifically, FTC argues in favor of: (a) permitting live video coverage of Supreme Court hearings; (b) imposing an 18-year term limit for service on the Court; (c) requiring, so as to avoid any possible conflicts of interest, all Justices to either divest their own common stock in companies whose cases could someday come before the Supreme Court, or otherwise place such assets into blind trusts; (d) compelling the Justices to fill out their statutorily-mandated annual financial-disclosure reports in a timely fashion, and requiring them to provide more comprehensive information (regarding travel records, stock transactions, etc.) than in the past; (e) requiring the Supreme Court’s press office to publicize events where any Justices are scheduled to speak publicly; (f) permitting those talks to be recorded and filmed; and (g) requiring that Supreme Court Justices be bound, like all other federal judges, by the “Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges.” Regarding this latter point, FTC states that “while none of the Justices has committed a removal offense” thus far, “all nine of them are culpable of various ethical oversights, from leaving assets off their annual financial disclosure reports to speaking at partisan fundraisers to ruling on cases despite credible conflicts of interest.”
FTC is a project of the New Venture Fund, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity that took in $358 million in 2016 and has funneled millions of dollars to left-wing advocacy groups like David Brock’s Media Matters for America and the Center for American Progress. As of 2016, all of FTC’s funding derived from the New Venture Fund.
FTC’s Executive Director is Gabe Roth, who holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He is a former manager of the Coalition for Court Transparency, a national alliance of media and legal organizations that advocates in favor of broadcasting Supreme Court hearings on television. Prior to joining FTC, Roth served as Vice President of the political consulting firm SKDKnickerbocker, and in various press and communications capacities for the New York State Department of State.
In 2017-18, FTC strongly opposed President Donald Trump’s two nominees to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch (2017) and Brett Kavanaugh (2018). In February 2017, for instance, the organization filed a Freedom Of Information Act lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice “for access to records from … Gorsuch’s tenure as Deputy Assistant Attorney General” during the George W. Bush Administration. Said Gabe Roth: “Little is known about Judge Gorsuch’s tenure at the Justice Department, but he served during a tumultuous stretch, at a time when agency attorneys were believed to be giving legal advice in support of warrantless wiretapping on American citizens and in the run-up to the infamous dismissal of U.S. attorneys for partisan reasons.”
In July 2018, FTC announced that it had commissioned attorneys from the organization American Oversight to file Freedom Of Information Act lawsuits against the U.S. Justice Department and the National Archives and Records Administration, seeking documents from Brett Kavanaugh’s time as a White House Staff Secretary under President George W. Bush. In the fall of 2018, Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation to the Court was delayed for several weeks by a circus of last-minute, uncorroborated allegations where accusers claimed that the nominee had engaged in sexual misconduct against them as a high-school and college student approximately 35 years earlier. Following Kavanaugh’s eventual confirmation in October 2018, it was revealed that in 2015 Fix The Court had purchased two websites — titled “BrettKavanaugh.com” and “BrettKavanaugh.net” — and had populated them with links to sexual-assault-survivor support organizations and left-wing advocacy groups. Gabe Roth explained that he had purchased the pair of websites because he “thought [they] might be useful in any forthcoming Supreme Court confirmation battles.”
Further Reading: FixTheCourt.com (“About Us“; “Media & Public Access“; “Term Limits“; “Code of Ethics“; “Blind Trusts & Recusals“; “Financial Disclosures“; “Public Appearances“); “Fix The Court” (InfluenceWatch.com); “The Left’s Judicial Watch Knockoffs Targeting Trump” (Capital Research Center, 12-28-2018).