Progressive activists are pushing 2020 Democratic presidential candidates to commit to increasing the number of Supreme Court justices in order to dilute the current conservative majority.
The recently created, aptly named “Pack the Courts” told POLITICO it has raised more than $500,000 to jump-start its effort and has partnered with Demand Justice, a progressive group founded in 2018 that is trying to match Republicans’ organizing efforts around the judiciary.
"At Demand Justice, we strongly believe that reforming the court — especially by expanding it — is the cornerstone for re-building American democracy,” said Brian Fallon, director of Demand Justice and a former Hillary Clinton press secretary. “The Kavanaugh court is a partisan operation, and democracy simply cannot function when stolen courts operate as political shills. We are thrilled to work in coalition with the team at Pack the Courts to undo the politicization of the judiciary.”
The effort is likely to prompt more debate among Democrats as to whether they should fight to restore norms and civility that have dissipated in the Trump era or engage in tougher, brass-knuckle politics.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) stirred up such a debate last week when she expressed openness to eliminating the Senate’s legislative filibuster in order to pass a robust liberal agenda. Fellow presidential candidates Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) have said they are wary of altering the filibuster rules, which would change the threshold to pass most legislation from 60 votes to 51.
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Pack the Courts Executive Director Aaron Belkin, a political science professor at San Francisco State University, said he thinks norms are important but “in this moment, only one side is honoring norms meaning they aren’t really norms anymore.” He said adding justices to the Supreme Court, which has had nine members since 1869, could “restore democracy to our democracy” with decisions on issues like voting rights and gerrymandering.
The group’s strategy centers on influencing the left’s political debate with a combination of producing social media videos, enlisting online influencers, conducting polling on individual court cases and partnering with academics on research. Belkin said his group has retained Means of Production, a liberal digital marketing firm that has become famous for its viral Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez web ad, to produce its online content. CNN’s W. Kamau Bell has joined the group’s advisory board to spread its message.
Without the millions of dollars that some progressive groups have saved, the lean operation will be active online and attempt to set up a field operation to pressure lawmakers — tactics that progressive groups like Indivisible and the Sunrise Movement have used to significant effect.
Sean McElwee, Pack the Courts’ director of research and polling, succeeded last year in pushing #AbolishIce into the Democratic Party mainstream and hopes court packing will be next by focusing on the 2020 presidential candidates. “Progressives strongly disapprove of numerous Supreme Court decisions and increasingly see the court as a partisan institution, and that provides a strong incentive for presidential candidates to endorse court packing,” McElwee said.
And at least one presidential candidate appears open to the idea. “I don’t think we should be laughing at it,” South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg said at an event in Philadelphia last week. “Because in some ways, it’s no more a shattering of norms than what’s already been done to get the judiciary to where it is today.”