Abortion decision to revive Supreme Court expansion debate

Strong pressure from Democratic voters to back move is likely

WASHINGTON — Emily Blocher remembers the response from an aide to Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff when, last fall, she traveled to Washington to advocate for expanding the Supreme Court: It was warm and attentive, she said, but conspicuously non-committal.

The 31-year-old Los Angeles resident has reason to think she’d be more persuasive now — not least because the California congressman has subsequently embraced a bill to add justices to the nation’s high court after news leaked that a majority of justices intended to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that guaranteed the right to an abortion.

“I really, really, really hope that this becomes way more of an issue during everyone’s reelection for office,” said Blocher, a volunteer for the progressive group Demand Justice, which focuses on the judiciary. “I really hope this is at the forefront of everyone’s mind.”

Advocates such as Blocher are hopeful that they can renew their once-stalled push to bring Supreme Court expansion into the mainstream of the Democratic Party, channeling the outrage over the court’s apparent impending Roe decision — and other cases waiting to be adjudicated by the nation’s highest court — into tangible support.

Even if the effort failed to break through in previous years, they say the pressure Democratic voters bring to bear on lawmakers will be like nothing they’ve felt before.

“It will increasingly become untenable for Democratic members of Congress to not support court expansion when Democratic voters are clamoring for that,” said Rep. Mondaire Jones, a Democrat from New York who has introduced legislation known as the Judiciary Act that would expand the size of the court from the current nine justices to 13 members.

The push from Jones and other advocates to expand the court, something not done since the aftermath of the Civil War in 1869, faces a series of stiff challenges. President Joe Biden, for one, has resisted attempts to back expansion, even after coming under pressure to do so during the 2020 presidential campaign. Democrats were angry about the state of the court after Republicans voted to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett just weeks before Election Day that year, despite blocking Merrick Garland from confirmation four years earlier, citing the proximity of the next election.

A commission created by the president last year to assess the Supreme Court failed to recommend court expansion, disappointing supporters of the proposal, and it gradually lost attention, even among activists, amid drawn-out debates over the legislative filibuster in the Senate.

Even if the proposal does gain momentum among most Democratic lawmakers, it’s highly unlikely to receive the near-unanimous support necessary to pass through the House or Senate this year, especially from more centrist lawmakers such as Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

And any sustained push from Democrats to expand the court is likely to become a target for Republicans, who label the proposal “court packing” and say it’s proof of the party’s everincreasing extremism.