by First Liberty Institute • 3 minutes
Just when you thought the push for radical court “reform” had gone away, the Far Left is once again insisting on expanding the U.S. Supreme Court. They haven’t given up.
Ahead of the November midterm elections, they’re laying the groundwork to bring back the Supreme Court Coup should they regain political power.
In response to the Supreme Court’s recent decision on redistricting, former presidential candidate Kamala Harris called for “Supreme Court reform, including the notion of expanding the court” during a call with a Left-leaning nonprofit, Emerge.
On a recent podcast, longtime political strategist James Carville said, “If the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress, I think on Day One… they should expand the Supreme Court to 13.”
“The truly radical project of court-packing is fast becoming a mainstream view, if not a litmus test, on the Left,” explains Guy Benson at the Washington Examiner. “Lawmakers with presidential ambitions are demanding ‘reforms’ to the Supreme Court, with several openly calling for the addition of four seats.”
“It’s a dangerous thing, a dangerous gambit,” said U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson in response to the remarks by Harris. “You don’t just blow up the system when you lose.”
“For the former vice president of the United States and a candidate for president to suggest that you should pack the Supreme Court or destroy these institutions because they lost is, I just think, outrageous,” Johnson added.
For years, activists have put forward radical proposals that would destroy judicial independence and the constitutional order. They have poured millions of dollars into trying to convince the public that their changes would “fix” the Supreme Court.
The list of bad ideas includes court-packing, ending life tenure for federal judges and giving Congress the power to oversee the Court’s ethics code. Some have proposed keeping the justices from hearing certain cases, effectively destroying the Court’s power of judicial review.
They also launched a wave of attacks against the conservative justices. They fabricated “ethics” scandals aimed at making Americans hallucinate misconduct. This line of attack was designed to smear the credibility of the justices and undermine the authority of their rulings. It’s clear what this is really about: destroying public trust in the Supreme Court.
During President Biden’s administration there was a major push to pack the Court, an effort that didn’t have anything to do with improving our judicial system. It was all about power and control.
After the 2024 election, that radical movement came to a temporary halt. But with the midterm election approaching, the effort has returned.
“Court packing would not simply alter the structure of the Supreme Court—it would convert it into a subsidiary of the other branches, destroying our constitutional order,” explained First Liberty Executive General Counsel Hiram Sasser.
“Americans don’t want their Constitution destroyed,” writes attorney and Yale Law School professor Jed Rubenfeld. “Polls consistently show that 54 percent to 58 percent of Americans oppose court-packing.”
“The whole point of constitutional law is to have one branch of government, headed by the Supreme Court, that can stand against majority will when it violates the nation’s fundamental law,” he added. “The point of court-packing is the opposite: to create a Supreme Court that won’t stand in the way of majority will. In other words, court-packing is a wrecking ball to demolish the Constitution itself.”
First Liberty is ready to fight back. Fighting for religious freedom is meaningless if the courts are politicized and turned into an extension of whomever holds power. We will do everything we can to protect judicial independence and the integrity of the courts.
