To Protect our Rights and Democracy, We Must Expand the Court

A hyper-partisan, right-wing Supreme Court majority is leading an assault on democracy and striking blows against reproductive rights, racial justice, climate action, voting rights, and more.

Of course, the Court did not get this way by accident. It is the culmination of a decades-long campaign from the conservative legal establishment to take over our judiciary. Adding four seats to the Court is the only practical, proportional response to conservatives’ theft of the Supreme Court and the only way to restore its balance, integrity, and independence in order to protect our most sacred rights and freedoms.

Fast Facts on Expansion

Unless we expand the Court, it will continue to dismantle the advances of the 20th century.

The Supreme Court has undermined, gutted, and outright reversed some of the most significant advancements of the 20th century meant to protect Americans’ rights and freedoms. 

The Court’s illegitimate right-wing majority has overturned Roe v. Wade and ripped away the constitutional right to abortion, gutted the Voting Rights Act to dismantle voter protections and silence voters, stymied the federal government’s ability to protect our right to clean air and fight the climate crisis, opened up the floodgates to increased gun violence, gutted Miranda rights, and eviscerated the separation of Church and state. 

These rights and protections are central to maintaining our collective safety, our personal autonomy, and the integrity of our democracy — and that’s exactly why the Court has targeted them. The Court’s rulings are bound together by no coherent judicial philosophy, only by six unelected lawyers’ determination to impose their own extreme views on the American people.

The disconnect between the Court and the people it governs undermines the legitimacy of our government.

America’s Declaration of Independence laid out a clear principle: Governments derive their legitimacy from the consent of the governed. The Supreme Court violates this principle. Republicans have controlled the Supreme Court for more than 50 years, despite losing the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 presidential elections. More than two-thirds of Americans had not even been born yet the last time the Court had a majority appointed by Democratic presidents.

A majority of the current Court was appointed by Republican presidents who first took office after losing the popular vote. Combined with structural biases in the Electoral College and the United States Senate that favor Republicans, the Court’s current 6-3 supermajority means Republicans are likely to control the Court for decades to come unless the Court is swiftly and deliberately rebalanced.

Court expansion is the only reform that immediately remedies this disconnect between the Court and the will of the people.

Court expansion is the only way to immediately rebalance the Court and restore its legitimacy by bringing its composition in line with the will of the people it governs.

When told that Republicans have controlled the Supreme Court for more than 50 years, a majority of Americans (52%) support expanding and rebalancing the Court. Support is particularly high among 2020 Biden voters (84%), Hispanics (70%) and young people (66% of 18-29 and 61% of 30-44), according to a poll conducted by YouGov for Take Back The Court in May 2022.

Other reforms, like term limits, could eventually result in a rebalanced Court, but this would take years after enactment — and would require Democrats to win every presidential election and retain uninterrupted control of the Senate for an extended period before rebalancing is accomplished. Such measures also run the risk of being overturned by the very Court they mean to reform. The more complex a reform, and the longer it takes to work, the more opportunities opponents of reform have to thwart it.

The Court will continue to lead the Right’s assault on democracy until we expand and rebalance it.

The right-wing Supreme Court is a key player in the Republican Party’s assault on democracy and attempt to entrench a permanent governing minority. From gutting the Voting Rights Act to upholding Republican gerrymandering to curtailing the rights of workers to join together in union to inviting unregulated corporate money to flood our elections to arbitrarily allowing Republicans — and only Republicans — to change the rules that govern our elections, the Supreme Court has worked relentlessly to dismantle our democracy.

Creating a just democracy and ensuring free and fair elections will require a variety of reforms. But the current Supreme Court is unlikely to allow any significant pro-democracy reform to stand — the same Court that gutted the original Voting Rights Act is likely to gut any effort to restore it.

The American people disapprove of the illegitimate right-wing Supreme Court.

Polls show public approval of the Supreme Court at an all-time low. Only 35 percent of registered voters have positive feelings about the Supreme Court, according to an August 2022 NBC poll. According to a Marquette Law School poll, 61 percent of Americans disapprove of how the Court is doing its job. Just 28 percent express confidence in the Court.

Expanding and rebalancing the Court is the proportionate and appropriate constitutional response to an illegitimate judiciary.

Unlike some other proposed reforms, the constitutionality of expansion is clear: Congress has legislatively changed the size of the Court seven times in the past. It is Congress’s responsibility to set the size of the Court; all it takes is a simple piece of legislation. Expansion is not in tension with any constitutional provision about the Court or its members.

Expanding the Court to 13 members would restore the traditional link between the Supreme Court and circuit courts — one justice for each circuit.

To fix our broken judiciary, we have to expand the Court.

This is not a Court that is working to serve Americans. It’s a Court that wants to rule us — to strip away our human rights and impose an extreme right-wing agenda on the American public against our will. Expanding the Court is how we protect our rights and freedoms against the Court’s attacks, how we restore legitimacy to the institution, and how we repair the broken-down bridge between the Court and the public it’s supposed to serve.

Preserving democracy in the U.S. requires Congress to reform the Supreme Court. To learn more about organizing for Supreme Court expansion, and to stay up to date on the Court’s threats to our rights and democracy, go to takebackthecourt.today and follow us on social media!