Senate

Schumer waiting for recommendation on Supreme Court expansion

by Alexander Bolton - 04/27/21 3:00 PM ET

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) says he will wait for a recommendation from bipartisan commission before saying whether he supports expanding the Supreme Court to 13 seats.

Schumer is staying neutral at the moment on court expansion, which his colleagues Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) support.

Markey, Nadler and Reps. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) and Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) introduced the Judiciary Act of 2021, which would add four seats to the Supreme Court, on April 15.

“Look, the bottom line is that I’m waiting to hear what President Biden’s commission says about the Supreme Court and they’re going to look at many different aspects,” Schumer told reporters Tuesday.

Other Senate Democrats, however, have come out against the idea.

“I don’t think the American public is interested in having the Supreme Court expanded,” said Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) told Politico recently.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says she has “no intention to bring” Nadler’s bill to the floor, even though it’s popular with progressives.

Senate Republicans have pounced on the idea as a subversion of the Supreme Court’s integrity, even though it’s just at the earliest stages of discussion.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has introduced a constitutional amendment to require the court be kept at its current number of nine justices. It has the support of Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), among others.

In a parallel effort, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has also proposed an amendment to the Constitution to keep the number of justices at nine. That has the support of Sens. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.).

Cruz first introduced his amendment in October of 2020 while Rubio came out with his proposal in March of 2019. Cruz and Rubio reintroduced their resolutions in February and January, respectively.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) criticized reporters last week for failing to note in their coverage that both former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Stephen Breyer, two of the most influential liberals to sit on the high court in two decades, both opposed expanding the Supreme Court.

“Nine seems to be a good number. It’s been that way for a long time,” Ginsburg told NPR in an interview aired in 2019.