How Democrats Are Pushing for a Supreme Court Overhaul

The House of Representatives on Wednesday struck down a Republican-led attempt to permanently limit the Supreme Court to nine Justices, with lawmakers voting largely along party lines. The attempt to preserve the makeup of the country’s top court was already a long shot: GOP Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona’s proposal was a constitutional amendment that required two-thirds of the chamber to approve.

Even if the proposal had passed the chamber, it faced similarly long odds in the Senate and would have then needed ⁠to be ratified by 38 of the 50 U.S. states. But the attempt fell at the first hurdle in the House, with a 212-206 vote. Still, the effort has put the Supreme Court—which Democrats have recently targeted over the conservative leanings of its decisions—firmly in the spotlight ahead of the November midterms.

The Supreme Court may have bucked President Donald Trump’s agenda in tariffs and birthright citizenship, but it equally handed him victories in federal elections, his attempts to remake the capital, and his Administration’s enforcement of a robust anti-immigration agenda. The GOP has argued against “packing” the court, whose current 6-3 conservative set-up often benefits Trump and his allies. But Democrats claim the conservative-led court’s latest rulings show it’s pandering to politics instead of law.

Jamie Raskin of Maryland dismissed the proposal to cap the number of Supreme Court judges as “another ⁠partisan power grab by MAGA, our colleagues who fear for the results in the November election.” Democrats’ criticisms coincide with signs of negative public opinion about the Supreme Court, with a July 2026 Washington Post-Ipsos poll showing that 46% of Americans believe the court is ruling on Trump’s policies based on ideology rather than the law. The conservative Justices have denied that the court's decisions are politically motivated. Here are some of those efforts: The U.S.

Constitution does not state how many Justices make up the Supreme Court, and the number of seats has changed over ​time, from as few as five Justices to as many as 10. Since 1869, however, the court has had nine authorized seats for Justices. In 1937, President Franklin D.

Roosevelt tried to expand the court by up ​to six Justices after the incumbents struck down ​parts of his ⁠New Deal agenda, but lawmakers decisively thwarted this. Since 2021, some Democrats have attempted to increase the number of Justices. In April that year, four Democrats introduced a bill envisioning a 13-Justice Supreme Court, claiming it “would restore balance to the nation’s highest court after four years of norm-breaking actions by Republicans.” Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in the 2024 presidential election, also said that Democrats should have a “real conversation” about changing institutions, including “expanding” the court.