Hickenlooper non-committal on expanding court
Senate hopeful says voting is the cure
John Hickenlooper is declining to say whether he believes congressional Democrats should pursue any specific policy responses to the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
"As I’ve said several times, I’m not crazy about the idea of court packing,” Hickenlooper, the Democratic challenger to Sen. Cory Gardner, said in a statement to The Denver Post. “What we need to do to change the way Washington works is change the people we send there — and that starts with voting next Tuesday.”
Asked on followup whether Hickenlooper in fact opposes court expansion by a potential Democrat-controlled Congress, the spokesman, Ammar Moussa, said the campaign would not be commenting beyond the prepared statement.
Hickenlooper, the former governor, has, like Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, has declined for weeks to take a specific position on whether Congress should add seats to the nine-member court, which now leans conservative by a 6-3 mar gin.
Asked last month if he suppor ts court expansion, Hickenlooper told The Denver Post, “I’m not going to answer your question, just because I can’t believe they (Senate Republicans) are going to go through with this.”
In previous comments on the subject, as in his latest statement, Hickenlooper has said he leans against expanding the court,
though he has also said he’d reconsider that position if he felt fundamental rights, such as access to reproductive health care, were on the line.
He promised The Post he’d be “much more forthcoming” on the topic of court expansion after the Senate confirmation process concluded.
Now that it has, in a 52-48 vote on Monday night that saw Gardner voting in the majority, and Hickenlooper declined through Moussa to be interviewed Tuesday.
Democrats who support court expansion are concerned about the rulings a conser vative Supreme Court majority might make regardless of whether voters flip the Senate blue. As Hickenlooper himself has noted, the majority may not only thwart certain new Democratic initiatives but also roll back existing precedents, such as the right to legal abortion, which Hickenlooper has called a basic civil right.
Many Republican leaders, including some in the Senate, have been open about their hope that Barrett will take anti-abortion positions as a justice.
At a town hall in 2019, Hickenlooper, then a presidential candidate, said, “The one place where I might consider cour t packing, … if the basic civil rights of this countr y seem at risk, I think that might be the one thing that would persuade me to — and perhaps it’d be on a temporary basis — but to court pack, to balance back any objective framework, to bring back the appropriate balance in our judicial (branch).”