As the public deals with the consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn 50 years of precedent protecting abortion rights across the country, trust in the Supreme Court has hit an all-time low, new polling by Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago finds.
The latest installment of the General Social Survey, which NORC has conducted since 1973, polled Americans between May and December of last year — the period immediately following the leak of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The polling found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that trust in the High Court took a nosedive last year. Just 18 percent of Americans said that they had a “great deal” of confidence in the Supreme Court last year, down from 26 percent in 2021. The amount of people with “only some” confidence dropped from 53 percent in 2021 to 46 percent in 2022.
Meanwhile, the proportion of people who said they had “hardly any” confidence in the Supreme Court exceeded the proportion who said they had a “great deal” of confidence for the first time in the poll’s history. A record 36 percent of respondents said they had “hardly any” trust in the Court, up 15 points from 2021.
Trust was lowest among Democrats. The proportion of Democrats with a “great deal” of confidence fell to a mere 8 percent in 2022, down from 25 percent the previous year. Confidence even fell among Republicans, despite the High Court being dominated by right-leaning justices, dropping from 31 percent in 2021 to 26 percent in 2022.
The polling demonstrates the crisis in confidence that the far right Supreme Court justices have brought onto the institution. Even aside from the questionable logic and legal basis behind the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling, the Court’s radical decision to yank away the right to bodily autonomy despite the longtime precedent set by Roe has yielded disastrous consequences for the public and people’s right to bodily autonomy, both for abortion seekers and for pregnant people seeking regular care.
The poll results also show how polarizing and unpopular the concept of banning abortion is when it becomes a reality. Opinions on abortion rights likely helped fuel the negative attitudes toward the Supreme Court; the polling finds that the proportion of people who agree that a person should be able to obtain a legal abortion for any reason rose above the proportion who do not agree for the first time two years ago. Now, 53 percent of adults believe that abortion access should be open to those who need it.
Previous polls on the Supreme Court after the fall of Roe have yielded similar results. A Gallup poll last September found that approval of the Supreme Court was at just 40 percent, tied with the record low first seen in 2021, while disapproval of the Court was at a record high of 58 percent. (The NORC poll did not ask explicitly about disapproval of the Court.)
These polls, however, were conducted before reporters uncovered a number of instances of extreme corruption from Supreme Court justices — specifically, from justice Clarence Thomas, who Chief Justice John Roberts has worked to shield in recent weeks.
The scandal surrounding Thomas has made the public aware of what has amounted to an open secret among judicial experts: that corruption is much more common among Court justices than the public knows, and that the justices have no interest in changing rules regarding corruption because it benefits them personally.
If the polling were conducted after these revelations, it may have found an even dimmer view of the Supreme Court.
Recent polling from The Economist and YouGov — conducted after the first bombshell ProPublica report on Thomas accepting lavish, undisclosed gifts from a Republican megadonor — found that nearly 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of Thomas’s choice to accept the gifts. Another poll, conducted around the same time by Demand Justice, found that 70 percent of Americans would support an investigation of ethical violations by Supreme Court justices.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.