Demand Progress

Expand the Supreme Court!

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    Expand the Supreme Court!

    Petition to the President and Congress:
    We urge you to immediately expand the number of seats on the U.S. Supreme Court by at least four, and quickly appoint new justices to fill those seats. The future of our democracy and our basic rights depends on it!

    The draft opinion written by far-right Justice Samuel Alito shows the Supreme Court plans to overturn Roe v. Wade and eliminate abortion rights for millions of Americans -- and it could happen as soon as next month.1 

    But it gets worse. The Washington Post just reported that Republicans plan to pass a national ban on abortion if they win back control of Congress.2 This would include even the blue states where abortion rights remain legal and protected. And if the Supreme Court gets away with overturning Roe v. Wade, it means they could let Congressional Republicans get away with banning abortion nationwide.

    We have to fight back NOW. Congress has the power to add seats to the Supreme Court and fix a broken institution that has been captured by the extremist far-right. There's no time to lose. Will you add your name in this urgent moment? 

    Sign the petition: Congress must add seats to the Supreme Court to protect abortion and other basic rights!

    This is all happening because the far right has succeeded in its decades-long campaign to secure a supermajority on the Supreme Court. Six out of nine Supreme Court justices have ties to the Federalist Society, a cabal of right-wing jurists backed by corporate funders such as the Koch Brothers. 

    It's not just abortion rights that hang in the balance: the far-right court is prepared to also hand down extremist decisions on voting rights, affirmative action, and gun rights in the months to come.

    The confirmation of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court was a historic victory. But Justice Jackson won't be able to put the court on the right track alone because, as Rep. Ayanna Pressley has explained, justice is "not actualized by any one person."3

    Rep. Pressley clearly stated in a recent interview: "We need to nominate and confirm a Black woman to the Supreme Court. We need to pass Rep. [Hank] Johnson and [Mondaire] Jones's legislation to expand the courts, for which there is precedence: Congress has done this seven times before."4

    Congress can pass legislation to rebalance the Supreme Court now, before the November election. It's constitutional, it's happened before, and it's the only way to stop the radical right takeover of our courts and our country! 

    Sign the petition: Urge Congress to expand the Supreme Court and save our basic rights!

    Sources: 
    1. Politico, "Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows," May 2, 2022.
    2. Washington Post, "The next frontier for the antiabortion movement: A nationwide ban," May 2, 2022
    3. Harvard Gazette, "How the Federalist Society came to dominate the Supreme Court," March 4, 2021.
    4. Grid News, "Ayanna Pressley wants Biden to do more than name a Black woman to the Supreme Court," February 14, 2022.