The U.S. Supreme Court, pictured April 9, 2026. Some progressives are seeking to restructure the court after seeing decisions in recent years that they say have given political support to President Donald Trump and Republicans. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
After the U.S. Supreme Court significantly weakened the federal voting rights law in an April 29 decision, U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries angrily condemned what he called an “illegitimate” conservative majority on the court.
“This isn’t even the Roberts Court,” Jeffries said, referring to Chief Justice John Roberts. “It’s the Trump Court.”
Democrats are renewing their calls for Supreme Court reform following the court’s decision Authorizes states to gerrymander Congressional maps in a way that splits districts where the majority of residents are black, Hispanic or other minority groups.
The significant opinion upended the reasoning behind decades of litigation that relied on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a law that grew out of efforts to abolish Jim Crow voting laws in the South to protect these majority-minority districts.
Critics of the court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority, have been pushing for change for years. These efforts often involve increasing the size of the court to blunt the influence of the majority or limiting the justices’ term limits, although other ideas, such as limiting the types of cases the court can consider, have also been discussed.
But the decision of April 29th appears to be the final straw for some Democrats and progressives, even though it’s unlikely they’ll be able to pass any of the changes on their wish list — at least for a long time.
After rulings in recent years that ended federal abortion rights and gave President Donald Trump broad immunity from prosecution while he was in office, they are fed up with a court that they say is divorced from the law and whose decisions are based on political principles.
“We cannot protect voting rights, civil rights or the environment while we have a Supreme Court majority captured by MAGA authoritarians,” Doug Lindner, senior director of justice and democracy at the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group, told reporters Thursday. “We must take back our Supreme Court.”
Any attempt to force significant changes through the courts will face stiff resistance from Republicans. GOP lawmakers have praised the court’s recent decision and some view longtime justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito as conservative icons. Unless Democrats win 60 seats in the Senate or eliminate the filibuster, it is highly unlikely that Congress will pass comprehensive reform.
Republicans have condemned previous proposals to change the court. After President Joe Biden suggested 18-year terms for judges and other changes in July 2024, US House Speaker Mike Johnson said The plan “would shift the balance of power and undermine not only the rule of law, but also the trust of the American people in our justice system.”
No action under Biden
Supreme Court reform has long been an issue among Democrats and progressives, but it gained momentum in the 2020 presidential campaign.
The court’s ideological makeup had already shifted toward conservatives after Justice Anthony Kennedy, who often swing votes on major decisions, retired in 2018 and was replaced by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative. Republicans then consolidated a clear 6-3 majority on the court in the fall of 2020 after liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was replaced by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
During the election campaign, then presidential candidate Biden spoke out in favor of a presidential commission that would investigate court reform. After his election victory, Biden convened a high-profile panel of law professors, former judges and other lawyers, which issued a final report in December 2021.
The Commission report has stopped advocating structural changes. It took no position on expanding the court’s nine-member size, citing “deep disagreements” among commission members over the idea. The Commission also took no position on term limits for judges.
The report was essentially shelved – Biden made no sedate effort to advance court reform, although he later proposed some reforms after he ended his re-election campaign.
Public opinion is failing
Americans’ opinion of the Supreme Court has plummeted. A Pew Research Center from August 2025 Opinion poll found that 48% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the court, a decrease of 22 percentage points from August 2020.
A survey published in September 2025 by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found 69% support term limits, but only 31% support increasing the size of the court.
Eric J. Segall, a law professor at Georgia State University and executive director of the Emmet J. Bondurant Center for Constitutional Law, Practice and Democracy, said previous courts have responded to the prospect of legislation, but the current court is not swayed by public opinion.
In some cases, the court tries to maintain its legitimacy by handing the opposing side a victory, Segall said, but in general the court’s decisions since 2018, when Kennedy retired, can be explained by the court being viewed as part of the Republican Party.
“This court is determined by the Republican Party,” he said.
Segall called for dividing the court evenly between conservative and liberal candidates. An evenly divided court would encourage greater compromise among justices, he contends. He also supports expanding court and term limits when possible. But he bluntly predicted that there would be no judicial reform in his lifetime.
“If Democrats have the power to do it, they won’t do it,” Segall said.
Action is unlikely, at least in the miniature term
Jeffries, who is likely to become speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives if Democrats retake the chamber in November’s midterm elections, said this week that “everything is on the table” when it comes to the Supreme Court.
“In the new Congress, we need to do something about this Supreme Court,” Jeffries said told the MeidasTouch network.
Representative John Rose, a Republican from Tennessee, said Social media said Jeffries’ comments showed Democrats were preparing to “crush the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court as soon as they’re back in power.”
Trump and some Republicans in Congress are confident that Democrats will end the filibuster to pass priorities like Supreme Court reform and want Republicans to end the filibuster first and pass a range of conservative priorities before the party potentially loses control of the Senate after November elections.
But even if Democrats end the filibuster, the party faces an uphill climb toward court turnover unless it regains control of Congress and the White House. That means a major overhaul would almost certainly not come into effect until 2029.
Trump’s answer
Trump had a turbulent relationship with the court but was almost certain to veto any legislative reform during his term.
While the justices have shielded Trump and future presidents from criminal prosecution for actions taken within the scope of their presidential duties, they have ruled his sweeping global tariffs illegal, dealing a major blow to one of his most significant policies. They also refused to hear legal challenges aimed at overturning Trump’s 2020 election loss.
Still, Trump on Thursday scoffed at Democrats’ hopes of reshaping the court in the future. He accused the party of having 21 justices on the court (Democrat-sponsored plans in recent years called for 13 or 15 justices). He also called Jeffries’ comments a “dangerous statement.”
“Hakeem Jeffries said the Supreme Court is illegitimate,” Trump said Thursday. “That’s a crude statement.”
