Washington — A Republican-proposed constitutional amendment to limit the Supreme Court to nine justices failed in the House on Wednesday, coming up well short of the two-thirds majority support needed for adoption.
The House voted 212 to 206 on a joint resolution to approve the amendment, which was proposed by GOP Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona. The amendment would require that “the Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine justices consisting of one chief justice and eight associate justices.”
“It fixes the number of justices at nine permanently, not because nine is a magic number, but because a fixed court cannot be expanded by whoever happens to win the next election,” Biggs said during floor debate Wednesday.
Amending the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority vote in both the House and Senate and then ratification by three-fourths of the states.
It’s the latest vote this week that Republicans are using to target the positions of the Democratic Socialists of America as several candidates who embrace its positions are poised to become members of Congress next year. On Tuesday, the House adopted a resolution condemning socialism “in all its forms.”
The DSA’s platform calls to replace the Supreme Court with a “judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.” Some Democrats have called for an expansion of the Supreme Court in recent years, including Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, who on Sunday voiced his support for expanding the court to 13 justices.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that limiting the high court to nine justices is “critically important.”
“Nine justices has worked well,” the Louisiana Republican said. “If you go down the road of packing the Supreme Court it turns into a political palooza, and it would not serve the country.”
House Democratic leadership urged members to vote against the amendment, saying it would strip Congress “of yet another constitutional authority that is meant to be controlled by the American people’s representatives.”
“This Republican majority — which has already surrendered Congressional war powers, Congressional taxing and tariff powers, and Congressional spending powers to President Trump — would now permanently relinquish the power to set the number of Supreme Court Justices, given to Congress in Article I of the Constitution,” said a notice to members from Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the House Democratic Whip.
Since 1789, Congress has exercised its constitutional authority to change the total number of justices seven times. The court has had nine seats since 1869.
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, argued that the vote stems from GOP fears about the November election results.
“Trump’s followers in Congress now seek to freeze into place the political court that MAGA built, for decades to come. Thus, they urge us to give away another critical power that the framers vested in us,” Raskin said on the House floor Wednesday.
