this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2026
45 points (97.9% liked)

United States | News & Politics

4216 readers
339 users here now

Welcome to !usa@midwest.social, where you can share and converse about the different things happening all over/about the United States.

If you’re interested in participating, please subscribe.

Rules

Be respectful and civil. No racism/bigotry/hateful speech.

No pics of text

Memes are now allowed, as long as they're US centric, general political memes please see !politicalmemes@lemmy.ca

Post news related to the United States.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
exposingfash@midwest.social
cm0002@infosec.pub
cm0002@lemy.lol
45
House Democrats block constitutional amendment to lock Supreme Court at 9 justices (www.nbcnews.com)
submitted 1 day ago by cm0002@infosec.pub to c/usa@midwest.social
10 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The vote was 212-206. All but one Democrat voted against it, as openness within the party to expand the high court by four seats grows.

The joint resolution, offered by Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., calls for amending the Constitution to say: “The Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine justices consisting of one chief justice and eight associate justices.”

The office of House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., encouraged lawmakers to vote “no,” saying the amendment would take away a power intended for Congress and do nothing to address the “affordability crisis” under President Donald Trump.

“This proposed constitutional amendment would permanently fix the number of Supreme Court justices at nine, stripping Congress of yet another constitutional authority that is meant to be controlled by the American people’s representatives,” Clark’s office wrote to lawmakers Wednesday ahead of the vote

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 7 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

To add to this, each circuit requires an SC justice to be its "circuit justice". Any "emergency" applications coming out of a circuit are addressed to the circuit justice individually, who can then make fast decisions as necessary. Any five votes on the court can then overrule anything a circuit justice does.

Anyhow, right now some justices have to do double duty on more than one circuit. So there is some kind of real impact to their workload that we could fix with 13 justices.