Republicans should rally behind the proposed ‘Keep Nine’ Amendment to limit the number of SCOTUS justices. Most voters support it.
Republicans should rally behind the proposed ‘Keep Nine’ Amendment to limit the number of SCOTUS justices. Most voters support it.
I n response to grassroots pressure, the newly released 2024 National Republican Platform takes a strong stand against threats by Democrats to pack the Supreme Court.
“We will maintain the Supreme Court as it was always meant to be at 9 Justices. We will not allow the Democrat Party to increase this number. . . . We will block them at every turn,” the platform states.
Platform Committee leaders told grassroots activists from the 60,000-member National Federation of Republican Women (NFRW) that their influence was pivotal in getting this language included in the platform.
But the platform drafters missed an even bigger opportunity. They could have drawn a contrast with Democrats like Joe Biden — or any Democrat who eventually replaces him — and those in key races for Congress who will mostly claim to oppose Court-packing but who won’t support the constitutional amendment, first introduced in Congress by a Democrat, to ensure that Court-packing never happens.
Now it’s up to Donald Trump, the Republican National Committee, and GOP candidates around the country to expose the true Court-packing intentions of Democrats. They can do this by endorsing and challenging Democrats to support the proposed “Keep Nine” Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that simply states: “The Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine Justices.”
More than 200 Republican members of Congress, 800 state legislators, and (by a unanimous vote) members of the RNC and many conservative groups including the NFRW and Tea Party Patriots have endorsed the “Keep Nine” Amendment. Polling shows that voters would support it by more than a two-to-one margin. That polling also shows that more Democratic voters favor the amendment than oppose it.
Most Americans agree that manipulating the number of Supreme Court justices for political advantage would be a historic mistake. If one party did it, another would soon retaliate, undermining the independence of the Court that Americans need to protect their constitutional rights from the abuse of government power.
But, in an indication of the growing threat, major Democratic-aligned interest groups including Planned Parenthood, abortion-rights groups, the National Education Association, the United Auto Workers, and the League of Conservation Voters have explicitly called for adding new justices to the Court.
A well-funded coalition of left-leaning special-interest groups and their allies in Congress are savagely attacking the legitimacy of the Court to “groom” the public for a Court-packing effort.
Not a single Democrat in the current Congress, even those who say they oppose Court-packing, has so far endorsed the “Keep Nine” Amendment.
In 2021, President Biden’s handpicked Supreme Court Commission, charged with studying Court reform, refused to even consider the merits of the “Keep Nine” Amendment, despite the fact that it was then, and is now, the most widely backed Supreme Court reform proposal in Congress.
Democratic leaders in Congress — including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — have coyly said that all Supreme Court reform options are “on the table.”
Democrats need just one more Senate vote plus control of the House and White House to create a “voting rights” exception to the Senate filibuster, add parts of Washington, D.C., as a new state with two new Senate seats, and then use their expanded majority to pack the Court.
Whether or not Americans preserve an independent Supreme Court and decisively reject Court packers in 2024 may be one of the most important policy outcomes of the election.
To draw a contrast with Democrats who claim to oppose Court-packing, short-term opposition to it is not enough. In every closely contested race around the nation, Republicans should make the “Keep Nine” Amendment an issue.
Republicans should make it clear that a Republican victory will preserve an independent U.S. Supreme Court of nine justices and also advance the goal of permanently taking away the power of politicians to manipulate the size of the Court.
Court-packing and the “Keep Nine” Amendment to ban it could be among the key issues that propel Republicans into winning a “trifecta” — control of the White House and both houses of Congress.