Democrats who just won back full control of Congress are pulling old Supreme Court reform bills off the shelf, aiming to force term limits and a binding ethics code onto the nine justices.
Story Snapshot
- A 2025 bill called the Supreme Court Term Limits and Regular Appointments Act would set staggered 18-year terms for justices.
- Democratic senators say the plan would create a new vacancy every two years, lowering the stakes of each confirmation fight.
- Lawmakers point to undisclosed gifts accepted by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito as proof the Court needs an enforceable ethics code.
- Republicans and legal scholars call the plans unconstitutional court-packing that would wreck judicial independence.
- No bill exists yet to expand the Court beyond nine seats, despite talk of it in Democratic circles.
A Stalled Bill Gets New Life
Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, introduced House Resolution 1074 back in February 2025. The bill, called the Supreme Court Term Limits and Regular Appointments Act, would give justices staggered 18-year terms instead of lifetime appointments. It would also limit the Senate’s power over confirming new justices. With Democrats now holding Congress, the long-shelved bill has a real shot at floor votes for the first time.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse laid out the thinking behind the plan in a Senate floor speech last year. He said the system would create a new Supreme Court appointment every two years, no matter which party controls the White House. Whitehouse argued this would make the Court “more representative of the American people” and cut the political drama out of each nomination fight. Supporters say regular turnover beats waiting for a justice to die or retire at a politically convenient time.
Ethics Complaints Drive a Second Push
Democrats are not just targeting how long justices serve. They also want stricter disclosure rules after accusing two sitting justices of hiding gifts. A June 2024 entry in the Congressional Record states that Justices Thomas and Alito “failed to disclose gifts they accepted” in violation of federal disclosure law. That claim rests mainly on statements from Democratic lawmakers, not a court ruling or independent investigation, so it remains a political accusation rather than a settled legal finding.
The Senate Judiciary Committee already moved a companion bill, the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act, out of committee and onto the Senate floor. That bill would require a binding code of conduct, stricter recusal rules, and public disclosure of who funds outside groups that file briefs with the Court. The Supreme Court adopted its own voluntary conduct code in 2023, but it carries no enforcement mechanism, leaving Democrats to argue Congress must step in.
Republicans Call It Court-Packing
Republicans have not softened their opposition just because Democrats now run Congress. Louisiana Senator John Kennedy dismissed an earlier version of the Senate ethics bill as “dead as fried chicken on the Senate floor”, a line that captures how little GOP support these measures have ever drawn. Legal analyst Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute went further, calling term limits a disguised court-packing scheme that would end judicial independence and violate the Constitution. That objection focuses on the term-limits plan, not the ethics bill, but it sums up the broader Republican case against Congress reshaping the Court.
Perhaps the Democrats have taken control of the House and Senate, and perhaps they have humiliated Donald Trump and the Republican Party, but the real battle has only just begun. It is not merely a battle to hold Trump’s corrupt regime accountable, something that can only be… https://t.co/4V6bL8IJ34
— عبدالمنعم المير (@MonemAlmeer) November 6, 2026
History offers a warning for both sides. Franklin Roosevelt tried to add justices to the Supreme Court in 1937 after it struck down several New Deal programs. Congress rejected his plan, and the public backlash became a lasting lesson in how court-reform fights can backfire on the party pushing them, according to a Congressional Research Service review of that episode. Whether today’s Democrats face the same fate likely depends on how voters see the balance between fixing a Court many view as unaccountable and preserving its independence from politics.
No bill currently exists to expand the Court past nine seats, even though some Democrats have floated the idea publicly. For now, the concrete legislative fight centers on term limits and ethics rules, both of which face a steep climb past Senate procedural hurdles and near-certain court challenges if they ever become law.
Sources:
cbsnews.com, congress.gov, newsobserver.com, nybooks.com
