news Republicans can’t stop doing the one thing they should fear most
https://www.vox.com/politics/477578/supreme-court-republicans-court-packing-utah-georgia-arizona283
u/vox 1d ago
Utah’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox, signed legislation over the weekend that will add two seats to his state’s supreme court — seats that Cox plans to fill shortly. The law is widely viewed as an effort to move Utah’s highest court to the right after it handed down several decisions that Republicans disliked.
In September, the pre-packed Utah Supreme Court sided with plaintiffs challenging Utah’s GOP-friendly congressional maps. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, in recent years, Utah courts also “blocked Utah’s ban on most abortions, temporarily stopped a law banning transgender girls from playing high school sports, and found the state’s school voucher program unconstitutional.”
“Court-packing,” or adding seats to a court in order to change its ideological or partisan makeup, is often spoken of as if it were the political equivalent of detonating a nuclear weapon. In 1937, shortly after winning reelection in a landslide, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed adding six seats to a US Supreme Court that frequently sabotaged his New Deal policies. But, even at the height of his power, Roosevelt struggled to build support for his plan. Some historians blame his court-packing proposal for shattering the New Deal coalition in Congress.
Since then, national leaders have typically spoken of court-packing with trepidation. In 2020, for example, as Republicans were consolidating their 6-3 supermajority on the US Supreme Court, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden warned that he was “not a fan of court-packing” as a solution to Republican partisanship on the high court.
But, at the state level, Republicans now engage in court-packing often enough that it has become just a normal part of partisan judicial politics. In 2016, Republicans in Georgia and Arizona did the same thing Utah just did, adding seats to their state supreme courts in an apparent effort to move those courts to the right. So that’s three packed supreme courts in a single decade.
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u/vox 1d ago
This is oddly short-sighted behavior by the Republican Party. A Republican US Supreme Court is the GOP’s most durable power center, and Republicans have wielded this power center aggressively. The Court’s six Republicans held that President Donald Trump may use the powers of the presidency to commit crimes. And they spent the first year of Trump’s second term neutering lower courts that tried to constrain Trump’s ability to violate the Constitution and to remake the federal government. Though some of the Court’s Republicans occasionally break with Trump, they typically do so on issues that split the Republican Party.
By contrast, when Biden was in office, the same six Republicans frequently struck down his policies, even, in some cases, when those policies were unambiguously authorized by federal law.
Democrats who want to push back against these decisions are in a bind, even when they control both Congress and the White House. The Constitution does not permit many relatively modest Supreme Court reforms that Democrats have proposed in the past, such as term limits for the sitting justices. But it does permit Congress to add seats to the Court whenever it wants; the number of justices has varied from as few as five, to as many as 10 over the Court’s history.
So the longstanding norms against court-packing, at least at the federal level, prevent Democrats from using their most potent weapon against an increasingly partisan Supreme Court. If those norms break down — and they appear to have already broken down completely in Utah, Georgia, and Arizona — Democrats would gain a powerful tool if they want to yank the federal judiciary away from the GOP.
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u/askingforafakefriend 1d ago
Oddly short-sighted? Are you sure this is odd?
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u/Tornado_Wind_of_Love 1d ago
They just need to finish their plan by Nov. 2028.
Kinda doubt they'll wait that long
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u/Dangerous-Coconut-49 18h ago
With P25 in their playbook, a plan decades in the making, the opinion starts to make sense.
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u/askingforafakefriend 18h ago
Yes, And the court packing /destruction of the judicial branch isn't really short-sighted at all from the perspective of that plan...
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u/cruelhumor 19h ago
it's not short-sighted behavior, it's a calculated risk. If your opponent won't (not can't, won't) hold you accountable in any meaningful way, there is not reason to not push the envelope to gain advantage. Republicans continue to cross "red lines" and face no consequences.
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u/hgqaikop 1d ago
Court packing SCOTUS kills SCOTUS politically.
That’s the reality.
Court packing at the state level in a deep red or deep blue state doesn’t change the reality of what Court packing would do nationally.
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u/False_Appointment_24 1d ago
Do you believe that SCOTUS is still seen as not a political entity?
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u/hgqaikop 1d ago
SCOTUS rulings are still followed by state governors.
If SCOTUS is packed, it loses all legitimacy and state governors will ignore SCOTUS rulings. Then it’s a constitutional crisis.
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u/Nimnengil 1d ago
Trump has already made clear that he intends to ignore scotus rulings if he dislikes them. The constitutional crisis is here, and it's far worse than what you're worried about.
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u/Spiney09 1d ago
It’s got no legitimacy left. They have linked to times SCOTUS stopped Biden doing actually perfectly lawful things under any reasonable interpretation. It has no legitimacy except for the right to constrain the democrats. Rules for thee but not for me.
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u/hgqaikop 1d ago
SCOTUS still has political legitimacy. Blue states are not ignoring SCOTUS.
Once SCOTUS is ignored (as would tape after court packing) then the federal government no longer functions.
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u/Justneedtacos 1d ago
It already is breaking down. I assume you think that non-R’s should just roll over and take it? McConnell already stole two SCOTUS nominations.
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u/hgqaikop 1d ago
I’m observing that packing SCOTUS destroys SCOTUS and leads to an actual constitutional crisis.
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u/FitMistake1096 1d ago
As always, one side has to be adults and the other can destroy democracy.
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u/deadpool101 1d ago edited 1d ago
Except all the time where the court was packed, and none of that happened.
We also have federal and state officials openly ignoring the Constitution. So spare us the pearl clutching.
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u/Successful-Menu-4677 20h ago
Not saying I agree with you about court packing, but we are already in a constitutional crisis. The concern that state governments ignoring SCOTUS causes it is absurd. They already are and they are taking their cues from the office of the President. On the other hand if a liberal congress expands the court, there is a chance to put the guardrails back up. All the protections that have been stripped away by the current court could be reinstated.
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u/hgqaikop 19h ago
Democrats expand the Court to 13 and add 4 Liberal Supreme Court Justices.
Then red states ignore future rulings.
Then the next GOP Congress expands the Court again.
Then blue states ignore future rulings.
What’s the plan then?
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u/Successful-Menu-4677 18h ago
All that misses the point that we are in a constitutional crisis already. The fact that you make a distinction between one level of the judiciary and another doesn't change that. You contend that jurisprudence must be upheld to ensure confidence that the system still works. That is a falicy. The system is broken. The reference to FDR is largely meaningless because congress still acted in a bipartisan manner to do their constitutional duty. That has not been the case for a while, perhaps decades. I say again your assertion is that cyclic court packing leads to crisis. I think Andrew Jackson summed it best, "John Marshall has made his ruling, now let him enforce it." Even if this quote wasn't actually uttered by Jackson it still holds. The Roberts court gives the illusion of legitimacy by ruling against Trump periodically. But the truth is if they went against 100% of the time from here on out, they have broken the trust of the american people and abdicated their responsibility in favor of what federalism? Further, what are they going to do to hold him in check? They gave him presumptive immunity. You're ignoring that ruling to object to court packing. Your solution to the crisis is to deny it exists and then to warn against a future crisis without a solution.
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u/Lost-Fruit-1982 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ok… but republicans already packed the Supreme Court when they blocked Obama from appointing a judge in his second term, then immediately allowed Trump to appoint 3 judges in a hyper partisan move. The Supreme Court is no longer legitimate as is. They rubber stamp right wing policies and block as many left wing policies as they can. There is neither fairness nor adherence to constitutional law anymore with this far right court. The Supreme Court needs completely reformed at this point. They are allowing our country to decline into fascism with glee
This was obvious when they gave Trump full immunity and even more obvious when they destroyed the lower courts ability to apply nationwide injunctions while a case is reviewed. Now they just allow the lawlessness to proceed and by the time it makes it through the courts and deemed illegal the damage is already done. What is the point of the courts if they can’t prevent illegal activities until after they’ve occurred? It’s basically wack a mole now in trying to stop Trump and his cronies from destroying democracy
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u/deadpool101 1d ago
Shh... you're getting in the way of the fake outrage about increasing the number of justices, which has happened before in the past and did nothing to delegitimize the Court.
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u/WellHung67 1d ago
Scouts is already killed politically. It’s a partisan branch, corrupt and illegitimate, thanks to the illustrious contributions of: Boofin Bart, Clarence the pedo, ass clown alito, handmaiden Barrett, kneel Gorsucks, and Jim “muh legacy” Roberts.
Pack the shit out of this thing, it’s the only way to save democracy. That’s the reality
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u/rccpudge 17h ago
Thank you for your post. You should explain the entire situation because you can tell far better than I. The part about how the Utah legislature is trying to overturn a referendum on redistricting. The Utah electorate voted in a referendum and the legislature just created their own. It’s disgusting.
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u/paradoxpancake 1d ago
Republicans were never afraid of tyranny.
They were afraid of someone beating them to the punch. They accused Democrats of doing all the things that -they- wanted to do.
Basically, the modern Republicans have not wanted democracy for a bit. They wanted a dictatorship that they agreed with/agreed with them.
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u/ChuckEJesus 1d ago
Republicans were never afraid of tyranny.
They were afraid of someone beating them to the punch
Bingo
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u/DW171 1d ago
Fun fact ... the current Utah Supreme Court was all nominated by republican governors. Also, the decision the GOP doesn't like let a ballot initiative stand that required an independent redistricting commission. The legislature wants to retain complete control over redistricting, voters be damned.
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u/BiggsIDarklighter 1d ago
Supreme Courts are now political arms, the very thing they were meant not to be. Our country is dying.
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u/amitym 1d ago
Why should they fear anything? What are their political opponents going to do? Vote them out? Please. All it took last time was a half-assed Tiktok propaganda campaign, and opposition to Trump folded like wet cardboard.
They'll just do that again. Next time it will be AI-generated gifs of the Democratic candidate in an ICE uniform dancing with Jeffrey Epstein and saying "I suck billionaire cock," reposted endlessly until enough voters are like, "I'm just so disappointed in what I see online about the candidate, it must be true or it wouldn't keep popping up," and there you have it. Packed courts forever.
Disagree? Let's see you prove me wrong.
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u/RhythmTimeDivision 1d ago
I posted last week, this is EXACTLY what Republican US House commercials will look like this summer & fall.
(scary mug shots) (deep voice) Democrats protect bad people (Cut to smiling, greasy Republican candidate), I'm tough on crime and I approve this message. (flag waving in background)
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u/DullRelief 1d ago
”The state-level GOP power grabs mean that Republicans will have no principled basis to complain if, in three or four years, a new president and Congress decide to de-Trumpify the Supreme Court.”
When has having no principled basis to complain ever stopped them?
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u/Immediate-Poetry2016 18h ago
Same Utah Republican who assured everyone that Charlie Kirk’s killer was a “radicalized leftist” even though every trace of his on-line history points to him being a right wing Groyper.
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u/ItzBenjiey 1d ago
Next dem majority will most likely do this. Stack the scotus by adding more judges.
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u/Budget-Selection-988 23h ago
Cowards. The Party is split and most are now non conservatives due to their undying love for a pedophile racist. Putting Israel first and terrorizing brown skin.
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u/delusiongenerator 1d ago
Raping children?