House Fails To Pass Resolution Limiting Supreme Court To 9 Justices

Authored by Stacy Robinson via The Epoch Times,

The House of Representatives rejected a proposed constitutional amendment on Sep. 2 that would fix the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices at nine.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) introduced the joint resolution under suspended rules but failed to garner the necessary two-thirds majority. The vote fell almost entirely along party lines at 212-206; only one Democrat supported the proposed amendment.

Biggs's legislation would have added a single sentence to the Constitution:

''The Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine justices consisting of one chief justice and eight associate justices.''

Any attempt to amend the U.S. Constitution faces an uphill battle. The resolution would need support from two-thirds of the House and the Senate and would need to be ratified by legislatures in 38 out of 50 states.

The proposal came amid statements by Democratic lawmakers indicating they want to expand the number of justices to 13 and criticizing some of the Supreme Court's recent decisions and its current makeup. The court is widely considered to have a 6-3 conservative-leaning majority.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), in an interview at the National Black Journalism Conference last month, accused the current Supreme Court of being a "subsidiary of the MAGA Republican party," saying that "dramatic reform" was warranted and all options were on the table.

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) said on Aug. 30 he thought the court should expand to 13 members.

"I think that we are in a position now that calls for some significant actions taken by the Congress ... and 13 is a pretty good number," Clyburn said in an interview with NBC.

He also said he regretted supporting Justice Clarence Thomas's confirmation to the high court in 1991, calling it a "mistake."

Debate ahead of the vote was heated, and Democrats argued that recent court decisions on immigration, abortion, and voting rules had unfairly favored President Donald Trump.

They also criticized the Supreme Court's recent ruling that states can't use race as a primary factor in drawing congressional district maps, which Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) suggested diluted voting rights for black Americans.

The push to "pack" the Supreme Court is not new: After the 2023 court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Johnson and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) reintroduced the 2021 Judiciary Act, which would have raised the number of justices to 13.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said that number made sense because the number of Supreme Court justices should match the number of appeals court circuits. He also noted that Congress changed the court's makeup multiple times before settling on the nine-member format in 1869.

Meanwhile, GOP members said adding new members to the Supreme Court was a blatantly political maneuver that would delegitimize that branch of government. Whenever a different party assumed power, it could simply add more justices to dilute the previous makeup of the court.

"That's why the amendment before us is so important. It fixes the number of justices at nine permanently, not because nine is a magic number, but because a fixed court cannot be expanded by whoever happens to win the next election," Biggs said.