Support for increasing the size of the U.S. Supreme Court inches upward in Washington

Sup­port for increas­ing the size of the Unit­ed States Supreme Court from nine to thir­teen mem­bers is slow­ly increas­ing in Wash­ing­ton, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s most recent statewide sur­vey of like­ly vot­ers has found.

52% of 773 like­ly 2024 gen­er­al elec­tion vot­ers sur­veyed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling ear­li­er this month said they sup­port­ed increas­ing the size of the Court to make it a more diverse and rep­re­sen­ta­tive body, while 40% were opposed and 8% were not sure. The per­cent­age who were sup­port­ive when we last asked this ques­tion in 2022 was a bare major­i­ty of fifty per­cent, while oppo­si­tion was 41%.

That means there’s been a net change in support/opposition of +3% in just a year and a quar­ter, prob­a­bly fueled by the cur­rent Court’s swift­ly declin­ing legit­i­ma­cy. For instance, the Supreme Court hand­ed down its awful Dobbs deci­sion end­ing Roe v. Wade only a few months after we first asked this Court expan­sion ques­tion, which had huge elec­toral reper­cus­sions in the midterms.

This year, the Roberts Court is also end­ing its term with a big bang, issu­ing a series of bad 6–3 deci­sions against affir­ma­tive action, LGBTQ+ rights, and stu­dent loan for­give­ness, all in the span of twen­ty-four hours, and all against the back­drop of a mas­sive ethics scan­dal exposed by the report­ing of out­lets like ProP­ub­li­ca, which have been pulling back the cur­tain on the cor­rupt behav­ior of Roberts’ right wing col­leagues like Samuel Ali­to and Clarence Thomas.

Roberts is aware that he is pre­sid­ing over an insti­tu­tion that is los­ing respect and cred­i­bil­i­ty, and seems to be fear­ful that the most recent dis­sents authored by the Court’s lib­er­al bloc — which now con­sists of Sonia Sotomay­or, Ele­na Kagan, and Ketan­ji Brown Jack­son — will rever­ber­ate across the country.

“It has become a dis­turb­ing fea­ture of some recent opin­ions to crit­i­cize the deci­sions with which they dis­agree as going beyond the prop­er role of the judi­cia­ry,” Roberts fret­ted. “We do not mis­take this plain­ly heart­felt dis­agree­ment for dis­par­age­ment. It is impor­tant that the pub­lic not be mis­led either. Any such mis­per­cep­tion would be harm­ful to this insti­tu­tion and our country.”

Sad­ly, that ship has already sailed. If Roberts wants to know who to blame for the Court’s grave cri­sis of legit­i­ma­cy, he can sum­mon his right wing col­leagues to his side and look in a mir­ror. This is a Court that does not look like Amer­i­ca and is not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Amer­i­ca. It’s loaded with a super­ma­jor­i­ty of nar­row­ly-con­firmed jurists who sub­scribe to extreme right wing ideals and are very com­fort­able with try­ing to impose those ideals on every­one else using warped inter­pre­ta­tions of our coun­try’s more than two hun­dred year-old plan of government.

It would take a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to impose term lim­its on Supreme Court jus­tices or imple­ment a long list of oth­er pro­posed reforms. How­ev­er, expan­sion of the Court can be done by major­i­ty vote of Con­gress and a pres­i­den­tial sig­na­ture. Real­ly and tru­ly — that’s all it takes! Expand­ing the Unit­ed States Supreme Court would allow for the appoint­ment of sev­er­al new jus­tices who could bring bal­ance and diver­si­ty to the insti­tu­tion. And rein­force­ments could also help with the Court’s work­load. Its size has changed before, and there’s no good rea­son it can’t again. There’s noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly spe­cial about the num­ber nine.

Here are the details of where Wash­ing­to­ni­ans now stand on this question:

QUESTION: Arti­cle III of the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion gives Con­gress the respon­si­bil­i­ty of deter­min­ing the size of the Unit­ed States Supreme Court and the estab­lish­ment of all low­er courts. Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose or strong­ly oppose the pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion to expand the size of the Unit­ed States Supreme Court from nine mem­bers to thir­teen mem­bers to make it a more diverse and rep­re­sen­ta­tive body?

ANSWERS:

• Sup­port: 52% 
  • Strong­ly sup­port: 38%
  • Some­what sup­port: 14%
• Oppose: 40%
  • Some­what oppose: 7%
  • Strong­ly oppose: 33%
• Not sure: 8%

Our sur­vey of 773 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Wednes­day, June 7th through Thurs­day, June 8th, 2023.

The poll uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (41%) and online answers from cell phone only respon­dents (59%).

It was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling (PPP) for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.5% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

NPI and PPP have worked togeth­er for a decade and have a track record of excel­lence, as detailed in this 2022 elec­toral polling recap and this 2020 one.

With Repub­li­cans cur­rent­ly in con­trol of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and two Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors opposed to expand­ing the Court or end­ing the fil­i­buster in the Sen­ate, there is no prospect of Court expan­sion pass­ing this Congress.

Pres­i­dent Biden has also not been sup­port­ive, telling MSNBC’s Nicole Wal­lace this week: “I think if we start the process of try­ing to expand the court, we’re going to politi­cize it maybe for­ev­er in a way that is not healthy.”

It’s too late for that, though. This Court is already an unhealthy, “politi­cized” insti­tu­tion. It has become an unac­count­able, par­ti­san body thanks to the tox­ic pres­ence of peo­ple like Clarence Thomas. Biden, inci­den­tal­ly, was Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Chair when Thomas was con­firmed. Democ­rats could have blocked Thomas from get­ting a floor vote, there­by pre­vent­ing his con­fir­ma­tion, but they didn’t.

Three decades lat­er, here we are.

Pres­i­dent Biden must recon­sid­er his posi­tion for the good of the country.

If Amer­i­cans elect a Demo­c­ra­t­ic tri­fec­ta next year, U.S. Supreme Court expan­sion can and should be some­thing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty gets done. It is the only rem­e­dy at hand that can tru­ly fix the Court, and it’s grow­ing in popularity.