WASHINGTON (AP) — A solid majority of Americans say Supreme Court justices are more likely to be guided by their own ideology than to act as neutral arbiters of government power, a fresh poll shows, as the high court nears decision on key cases involving former President Donald Trump and other contentious issues.
According to a poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, seven in 10 Americans believe Supreme Court justices are more ideologically influenced. But only three in 10 American adults believe the justices are more able to exercise independent oversight over the other branches of government through their fairness and impartiality.
The poll reflects the ongoing loss of confidence in the Supreme Court, which enjoyed broader trust just a decade ago, and underscores the challenge the nine justices – six appointed by Republican presidents and three by Democrats – face in being seen as anything other than just another element of Washington’s hyper-partisanship.
The justices are expected to decide soon whether Trump is immune from criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn his 2020 re-election loss, but the poll suggests that many Americans already have concerns about the justices’ ability to rule impartially.
“It’s very political. There’s no doubt about it,” says Jeff Weddell, a 67-year-old automotive technology sales representative from Macomb County in the swing state of Michigan.
“The court’s decision-making is so rigged,” said Weddell, an independent who plans to vote for Trump in November. “No matter what they say about President Trump’s immunity, this will be politically motivated.”
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Trust in the Supreme Court remains low. The poll of 1,088 adults found that 4 in 10 U.S. adults say they have little confidence in the people who run the Supreme Court, which is consistent with an AP-NORC poll from October. As recently as early 2022, before the high-profile ruling that struck down the constitutional right to abortion, an AP-NORC poll found that only about a quarter of Americans had no confidence in the justices.
And although the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has scored some historic victories for Republican policy priorities in recent years, the judges are not exactly enthusiastic about the Republican base.
It has been two years since the court’s ruling on abortion rights. Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – Trump-nominated justices who were confirmed by the Republican Senate – were part of the majority that overturned the nearly 50-year-old abortion precedent in Roe v. Wade.
This year’s legislative session, with a dozen cases still undecided, has already seen some essential rulings. In early June, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld access to the drug mifepristone, which was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the United States last year. In the same week, the court struck down a Trump-era gun restriction, a ban on rapid-fire weapon accessories known as bump stocks – a victory for gun rights activists.
Only about half of Republicans have a great deal or moderate confidence in the court’s handling of key issues, including gun policy, abortion, elections and voting, and presidential power and immunity, according to the fresh poll.
“I don’t have much faith in the Supreme Court. And that’s unfortunate because it is the final word, the final check on our three-branch system,” said Matt Rogers, a 37-year-old Republican from Knoxville, Tennessee.
Other Republicans share that distrust, even though the court’s current makeup is more conservative than any other court in current history. They also disagree on whether the justices are more likely to be guided by personal ideology or impartiality: About half of Republicans say the justices are more likely to shape the law to conform to their own ideology, and the other half say they are more likely to provide an independent check on their co-equal powers.
“I think they are being influenced and pressured by a lot of people and organizations on the left,” said Rogers, a health and wellness coach who plans to vote for Trump for a third time this year. (*7*)
Some Republicans have less confidence in the court’s handling of certain issues than others. For example, the poll found that about six in 10 Republican women have little to no confidence in the court’s handling of presidential powers and immunity, compared with 45 percent of Republican men.
Janette Majors, a Republican from Ridgefield, Washington, says it’s only natural for a judge to reflect the ideology of the president who nominated him.
But incidents outside the Supreme Court have weakened their confidence in the people at the top of the court.
“What you hear about Clarence Thomas accepting trips paid for by wealthy people makes me believe there are some people there I shouldn’t trust,” Majors said, referring unprompted to reports that Thomas had received undisclosed pricey gifts, including trips, from major Republican donor Harlan Crow for years.
According to the poll, Democrats and independents are even more skeptical about the court’s neutrality.
About 8 in 10 Democrats – and about 7 in 10 independents – say the justices are more likely to shape the law to conform to their own ideology. A similar share have little or no confidence in the court’s handling of issues such as abortion, gun policy and presidential powers and immunity.
Michigan Democrat Andie Near noted that the court appeared to have become a political tool in 2016, when then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold hearings on Merrick Garland, Democratic President Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court.
McConnell quickly allowed hearings after Trump nominated Gorsuch within ten days of taking office in 2017.
“I had believed that the court, even though it might lean left or right, served the entire country,” said the 42-year-old museum registrar from Holland, Michigan. “It was then that I realized that the Supreme Court is being used to distort the political environment in which we live, and it has only gotten worse.”
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The survey of 1,088 adults was conducted June 20-24, 2024. The sample came from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The sampling margin of error is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points for all respondents.
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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.
