Vice President Kamala Harris attacked the conservative-controlled Supreme Court on Wednesday, warning that its future decisions could limit a broad range of civil rights and personal freedoms for many Americans.
In an interview with The New York Times, she expanded on her criticism of the court’s decision to overturn federally guaranteed abortion rights in 2022, going beyond President Biden’s past comments to raise direct alarms about Justice Clarence Thomas and the broader direction of the court.
“This court has shown itself to be an activist court,” said Ms. Harris, who previously served as California’s attorney general and as the district attorney of San Francisco. “I worry about fundamental freedoms across the board.”
Asked what specific legal precedents could be undone by the court, Ms. Harris demurred, saying she was “hesitant” to do so.
“I don’t want to, at this point, use my voice in a way that is alarmist,” she said. “But this court has made it very clear that they are willing to undo recognized rights.”
The interview, conducted after a campaign event focused on abortion rights in Pennsylvania, covered a range of issues related to the court, the 2024 election and the state of American abortion rights. Ms. Harris’s comments went beyond previous criticism of the country’s highest court by the Biden administration, though her remarks were far less scathing than the direct attacks made during the previous administration, when then-President Donald J. Trump went after Justice John Roberts.
In March, Mr. Biden said the justices “made a mistake” and “read the Constitution wrong” in their decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, but he limited his assessment to that specific decision.
When pressed during the interview on Wednesday, Ms. Harris pointed to Justice Thomas’s writings in the case that overturned Roe as an indication of where the court might be headed. In a frank concurring opinion, Justice Thomas wrote that the court should “reconsider” decisions that guaranteed rights to same-sex intercourse and marriage and to contraception.
“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.”
During her time as a senator from California, Ms. Harris opposed the confirmation of Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. Her combative and direct questioning of Mr. Kavanaugh during his contentious confirmation hearings in 2018 helped lift Ms. Harris into the national political spotlight.
Ms. Harris declined to say whether she believed any of the justices had lied during their hearings, when they were asked if Roe was an established legal precedent.
Asked about the presidential race, she said Mr. Trump doesn’t trust women to make their own decisions, but she refused to say whether the former president respects women in any capacity.
She said she judged Mr. Trump based on his conduct, adding that she had never met him personally.
“I don’t know what is in his mind,” she said. “I will say that when you look at Trump abortion bans around the country, those abortion bans suggest that there’s a lack of trust of women to be able to know what’s in their own best interest.”
The vice president predicted a dark future for abortion rights should Mr. Trump be elected again to the presidency. Women’s pregnancies could be monitored in states where abortion is banned to prevent them from obtaining the procedure, she said, and Mr. Trump would sign a national abortion ban if such legislation reached his desk. “I think they might do that,” Mr. Trump said of states’ monitoring of women’s pregnancies in an interview with Time magazine last month. “You’ll have to speak to the individual states.”
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has tried to soften his opposition to abortion rights, saying the issue should be left to states to decide and refusing to accede to the demands of anti-abortion activists and endorse a federal ban.
Ms. Harris said she was not worried that such efforts could help Mr. Trump win support from voters who support abortion rights.
“I think the American people recognize when they’re being gaslit and have the ability to decipher beyond the charade,” she said.
Ms. Harris has made abortion rights a central cause of her vice presidency, traveling the country to visit clinics and hold events in states where bans have been enforced. In Washington, she has conducted a steady stream of meetings with activists, state legislators, doctors and patients to try to find ways to combat conservative efforts to enforce bans and limit access to the procedure.
At the campaign event in Elkins Park, Pa., on Wednesday, she cast abortion rights as an issue of personal freedom and the bans as a type of government overreach into the private lives of American women — messaging that has been widely adopted by Democrats since the Supreme Court overturned federal abortion rights.
“One does not have to abandon their faith or their deeply held beliefs to agree that the government should not tell her what to do,” she told the audience at an event with Sheryl Lee Ralph, an actress on the TV show “Abbott Elementary.” “Do you not trust women to know what is in their own best interest?”
Later that evening, she returned to Washington to deliver remarks at the annual gala of Emily’s List, the organization that supports Democrats who back abortion rights.
In her interview, Ms. Harris said “more work has to be done” to persuade voters to re-elect the Biden-Harris ticket, even on the issue of abortion rights.
“It’s an election for president of the United States — by its very nature, it requires a hard-fought campaign and a hard-won victory,” she said. “No one should be handed the presidency, right?”