Sen. Warren Once Again Calls For Supreme Court Expansion, Despite Recent Opposition, Including From Democrats

Topline

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called on Congress to expand the U.S. Supreme Court Monday, following the nation’s highest court’s controversial recent rulings threatening abortion access and as Democrats call out conservative Justice Clarence Thomas for potential ethics violations–though previous Democrat-led initiatives to expand the court have fallen flat.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called for the Supreme Court to be expanded by four justices.

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Key Facts

In a tweet posted Monday morning, Warren argued the court needs to be expanded “to rebalance it,” slamming the court’s 6-3 conservative majority for “shredding abortion rights” and “rigging the rules against workers and consumers” (appearing to allude to the court’s recent decisions to overturn Roe v. Wade as well as multiple recent rulings targeting labor unions—which Warren has previously lambasted).

Warren, a former law professor at Harvard University, also pushed for a “binding code of ethics” for justices—and though she did not single out any justices by name, her comments come as Thomas faces heavy scrutiny for a slew of potential ethics violations, including reports he failed to disclose luxury trips and gifts from GOP megadowner Harlan Crow.

Her comments also come one day after she announced an initiative for Supreme Court reform, along with a group of progressive organizations and Democrats in Congress, including Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)—part of a 20-stop bus tour in preparation for the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing in the coming weeks to examine potential ethics guidelines following the release of Thomas’ undisclosed gifts.

Tangent

Warren’s plea is not her first for the court to be expanded: she had argued in a December 2021 op-ed published in the Boston Globe the court should be expanded from nine to 13 seats, calling on Congress to add the seats and writing the move would “protect America’s democracy and restore faith in an independent judiciary committed to the rule of law.” Warren, a two-term senator and member of the Senate’s finance and banking, housing and urban affairs committees, also argued at the time Republican “extremists” had “hijacked” the court to benefit “wealthy corporations and special interests”—specifically calling out the court’s conservative majority’s rulings on a so-called Muslim ban in 2018 and two recent rulings to loosen the Voting Rights Act.

Contra

Despite calls from Democrats to expand the court—including an April 2021 bill introduced by a group of progressive senators including Markey, Mondaire Jones (N.Y.), Hank Johnson (Ga.) and Jerry Nadler (N.Y.) to raise the number of justices to 13—the Biden Administration and several key Democrats have been reluctant to endorse such a move. In December 2021, the Biden Commission, a presidential commission formed that year, said it would take “no position” on the matter and refused to make a recommendation to Congress. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), then House Speaker, also expressed opposition to the bill, and said she had “no plans” to bring it to the House floor, though she added a future expansion is “not out of the question.”

Surprising Fact

Despite the court’s monumental decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last June and leave abortion rights up to individual states, the court last week blocked a controversial decision from a lower court that would have imposed restrictions on the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, a widely-used abortion pill.

Big Number

47%. That’s the percentage of Americans who approve of the Supreme Court, according to a recent Marquette Law School poll—a significant drop from the 66% of Americans who said they approve of the court in 2020. A C-SPAN/Pierrepont poll released earlier this month found only 37% of Americans believe the court acts in a nonpartisan way, with 69% of respondents supporting an 18-year term limit on justices, as opposed to lifetime appointments.

Key Background

Congress has acted seven times previously to rebalance the nation’s highest court, though it has maintained its nine justices since 1869. Calls from Democrats to add justices to the court have intensified in recent years, particularly after the Senate’s confirmation of Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett just one month before the 2020 election, replacing long-time Clinton nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Biden pledged at the time to form a panel of legal scholars and former judges tasked with studying a potential expansion—though that panel later cautioned an expansion could come off as a partisan move that could create a “continuous cycle of future expansions.”