Democrats unveil plan to pack Supreme Court with 13 justices
Democratic politicians on Thursday unveiled their plans to expand the US Supreme Court from the current nine justices to 13 — a proposal that has been roundly criticized as “court packing” to meet political needs.
“We are here today because the United State Supreme Court is broken,” said Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey at a press conference on the steps of the nation’s highest court in Washington, DC. “It is out of balance and it needs to be fixed.
“I’m disappointed to say that too many Americans question the court’s legitimacy. The consequence is the rights of all Americans but especially people of color, women and our immigrant communities are at risk.”
Markey, who is co-sponsoring the bill, the Judiciary Act of 2021, with New York Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Mondaire Jones and Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia, accused Republicans of stealing seats on the coveted court.
“Republicans have purposely warped and weaponized the highest court of the land for their own partisan gain,” he said. “Republicans seem to think that equal justice means justice for their purposes, their values, their causes. That is not equal justice. That is not the sacred duty of the Supreme Court.”
The progressive Democrats’ proposal appears to have come as retaliation for Republicans denying Obama appointee Merrick Garland’s confirmation to the Supreme Court during the 2016 election — paving the way for Neil Gorsuch, former President Trump’s pick, to take the seat.Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett was also confirmed to the Supreme Court about a week before the 2020 election.
“They claimed that the proximity to a presidential election meant that the seat had to be held open until the people, through their votes for president, could decide who should fill it,” said Markey.
“Yet four years later, just days before the 2020 presidential election, even while Americans were casting ballots, [then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell and his Republican colleagues confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the court to fill the seat held by the late great Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. So much for letting the people weigh in.”
Nadler, meanwhile, said a panel of 13 justices would mean one for each of the country’s 13 circuit Courts of Appeals — and noted that the size of the court has changed seven times in the course of history.
“Nine justices may have made sense in the 19th century when there were only nine circuits,” Nadler said. “But the logic behind only having nine justices is much weaker today.”
The move comes as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi flatly said she would not support the bill, which is staunchly opposed by Republicans and legal purists.
“I don’t know that that’s a good idea or bad idea. I think it’s an idea that to be considered. And I think the president’s taking the right approach to, to have a commission to study such a thing,” the top-ranking House Democrat said, calling President Biden’s move itself “a big step.”
“It’s not out of the question, it has been done before,” she went on to say, noting that “the history of our country a long time ago, and the growth of our country, the size of our country, the growth of our challenges in terms of the economy, etc. might necessitate such a thing.”
As for now, however, Pelosi is only backing the commission.
“I have no plans to bring it to the floor,” she said.
Asked about Pelosi’s reaction, Nadler said he expects she and other critics will eventually come around.
“Speaker Pelosi is a very good judge of events and of history and I believe as events unfold and the court comes down with decisions destructive to a woman’s right to choose, comes down with decisions destructive to climate … I believe Speaker Pelosi and others will come along,” Nadler said.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) also balked on Thursday.”
I’m not ready to sign on yet. I think this commission of Biden is the right move,” he said.
The proposal is also opposed by New York Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from Long Island.
“This is a system that has worked well for a long time. Changing it based on party control is not a good practice,” the moderate told The Post.
Critics, including current Justice Stephen Breyer, the longest-serving of the three Democrat-nominated justices, have warned that changing the structure of the bench could backfire — by further eroding Americans’ trust in the system.
Michael W. McConnell, director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, slammed the proposal as “a poison pill for the constitutional system” and an “ugly gesture.”
“It’s simply an attack on the independence of the judiciary,” McConnell told The Post. “If congress can add new justices to the court just because they don’t like the tenor of the decisions, the court loses its independent stature.”
McConnell, a former Circuit Judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, said the bill had no hopes of passing and amounted to “nonsense.” The lawmakers backing it, “should be ashamed of themselves,” he added.
Conservatives currently hold the majority on the bench — tipping the balance of the vote to 6-3 — after President Donald Trump’s appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon.
Trump appointees Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch also sit on the court.
Congress altered the number of justices on the court several times over the 19th century, from a low of five to a high of 10. The number was fixed at nine shortly after the Civil War.
In the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt unsuccessfully sought to expand the court after conservative justices ruled against some of his New Deal policies.
President Biden has in the past called that a “bonehead” move by FDR.
Additional reporting by Carl Campanile and Tamar Lapin
