ICYMI: Demand Justice in the News on SCOTUS Expansion
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 3, 2026
CONTACT: [email protected]
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Across several news outlets this week, Demand Justice made the case for Supreme Court expansion and the dire legitimacy crisis the Court faces after years of attacking Americans’ fundamental rights and further entrenching the oligarchy.
Key Excerpts Below:
WASHINGTON POST: Republicans court debate on expanding the Supreme Court
By: Dan Merica
“A lot has changed since 2020 when expansion was seen as a radical idea,” said Josh Orton, the head of Demand Justice, a group focused on Supreme Court reform. “Expansion has to be central to any conversation about the court. … To me, it is an emergency.”
NBC NEWS: House Democrats block constitutional amendment to lock Supreme Court at 9 justices
By: Sahil Kapur and Kyle Stewart
“What was once a fairly dramatic and fringe idea has now become mainstream because of how fed up the country has become with the [Chief Justice John] Roberts majority,” said Josh Orton, president of the progressive judicial group Demand Justice, which has been pushing for court expansion since 2020.
“People understand this is now an emergency,” he added. “They see the Roberts majority as more corrupt, more friendly to corporate power and to the Trump administration and more antidemocratic.”
. . .
Orton said it will be an issue going into the 2028 presidential race.
“We intend to continue building the case for major Supreme Court reform through the 2028 election cycle,” Orton said, dismissing “passive” Democrats who oppose the idea for fear that Republicans would respond in kind and add more seats.
“You can be damn sure that if there had been a long-standing progressive majority on the court, Republicans would have already voted to expand it,” he said. “This has to happen in the first two years of the next Democratic administration.”
THE CONTRARIAN: Clyburn Puts Supreme Court Expansion Front and Center
By: Jennifer Rubin
In opposing the gambit [of the GOP House Bill to freeze the Supreme Court at nine seats], the progressive group Demand Justice released a statement explaining:
“Court expansion is the only court reform option that would promptly redress the 6-3 supermajority, which is itself the result of a partisan power grab. When the American people are counting on congressional Democrats to be the last line of defense against the Administration’s assault on the rule of law, it is more critical than ever to fight MAGA power grabs.”
Noting that MAGA justices’ hugely unpopular and constitutionally flawed decisions in the Callais and Dobbs decisions have prompted trust in the court to decline and support for serious reform to spike, Demand Justice urges Congress to keep expansion as a viable option, observing that the “most persuasive argument in favor of expansion is the aggressive approach of the Court itself: the right-wing majority will continue to dramatically remake the law to favor the oligarchy.”
NOMINATION NOTES: House fails to pass “partisan power grab by MAGA” to freeze Supreme Court at nine justices
By: Patrick McNeil
Advocates for a fair judiciary called on members to oppose the proposal ahead of this afternoon’s vote. In a memo to House Democrats published on Tuesday, Demand Justice called it a “blatant power grab that would calcify the anti-democratic Roberts majority,” warning that “Democrats should not vote for any constitutional amendment that would lock-in a conservative supermajority, particularly a supermajority that has already demonstrated its hostility to voting rights, civil rights, and worker rights, among others.”
. . .
“When the American people are counting on congressional Democrats to be the last line of defense against the Administration’s assault on rule of law, it is more critical than ever to fight MAGA power grabs,” Demand Justice’s memo states. “Removing court expansion from the table would be democratic and political malpractice.”
. . .
Following the vote, Josh Orton, president of Demand Justice, said he was “grateful to House Republicans for proving today that expanding the Supreme Court is no longer a radical idea,” adding that “Voters won’t forget that in their last dying breath in the majority, Republicans sought to rig the Court in their favor. Under the next Democratic administration, we must end a tyrannical Court majority that does nothing but hand more power to the already-powerful.”
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