Newly empowered Democrats could revive plans for court reforms

Washington — After years of calling for reforms to the Supreme Court following blockbuster decisions on abortion, presidential power and voting rights, Democrats may be poised to push forward with their court-focused plans after winning control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections. 

Democrats are expected to hold at least 54 seats in the Senate and at least 250 members in the House, giving them the opportunity to take up legislation that stood no chance of advancing in the GOP-led Congress.

While Democrats have not yet unveiled their legislative priorities for the next Congress, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is expected to be elected speaker in January, has indicated he has the Supreme Court on his mind.

“We must root out corrupt price gouging, clean up the mess at the Supreme Court and ban Members of Congress from trading stocks,” he wrote in a letter to his Democratic colleagues formally announcing his bid for the speaker’s gavel. “Accountability begins at home.”

Jeffries told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in August that “dramatic” reform to the Supreme Court is needed, and said Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, who will likely helm the House Judiciary Committee in the next Congress, would take the lead. A spokesperson for Raskin did not immediately return a request for comment.

Over the years, Democrats have proposed a variety of measures aimed at reshaping the Supreme Court — from implementing term limits for the justices to laying out new ethics rules to adding seats.

During the first two years of the Biden administration, when Democrats last controlled Congress, the House approved legislation that would have imposed ethics requirements on Supreme Court justices. But the measure stalled in the Senate.

Then-President Joe Biden established a commission tasked with studying proposals to reform the high court, but the panel did not recommend structural changes and instead laid out the arguments in support of and against potential changes.

But calls for Supreme Court reforms have grown louder since Democrats were last in charge, particularly as the court’s conservative majority has overturned longstanding precedents and expanded executive authority. 

With Democrats now holding a majority in the House, members could push through legislation imposing changes on the high court. Still, it’s unlikely those plans would clear the Senate, where most legislation requires 60 votes to advance. Democrats will control between 54 and 56 seats. And even if court-reform measures did win approval from both chambers of Congress, it’s unclear whether Mr. Trump would sign them into law.

Here are some of the proposals that Democrats could take up in the next Congress:

Ethics reforms

Legislative efforts aimed at requiring the Supreme Court to adopt a code of conduct gained momentum in 2023, after ProPublica published a series of articles about Justice Clarence Thomas’s trips with a wealthy Republican donor that were omitted from his financial disclosures.

On the heels of the revelations, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced legislation that would require the Supreme Court to adopt an ethics code and implement procedures to handle complaints of misconduct. But the proposal from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, died before the full Senate.

Whitehouse reintroduced the proposal in May 2025. Rep. Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, introduced companion legislation in the House.

Whitehouse and Johnson’s legislation would also require the Supreme Court to establish rules for the disclosure of gifts, income or reimbursements, including a requirement that parties to a case or people filing friend-of-the-court briefs must disclose any gifts to the justices.

Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Rep. Daniel Goldman of New York also introduced plans that would require the Supreme Court to establish an internal Office of Ethics Counsel and Office of Investigative Counsel. The investigative counsel would review and investigate ethics complaints against the justices.

A measure from Maryland’s Raskin and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York would prohibit federal judges and Supreme Court justices from receiving gifts valued at more than $50.

The Supreme Court did put its own code of conduct in place in November 2023, but its lack of an enforcement mechanism led to calls for Congress to step in.

Beyond the Supreme Court, a Democratic-led Congress could also investigate claims of misconduct by federal judges on the lower courts that have recently become public, said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, which advocates for reforms to the Supreme Court and lower courts.

Some federal judges have been accused of mistreating their clerks. Others have been investigated for alleged misconduct.

U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross in Georgia received a private reprimand after an investigation found she had sex with a police officer in her chambers. GOP Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia has filed articles of impeachment against her.

U.S. District Judge Ada Brown in Texas is facing judicial conduct proceedings after she was accused of making racial insults toward a lawyer, judges and court staff, and recusing from dozens of cases without explanation or for “unusual” reasons.

“There’s 2,400 federal judges, so there’s going to be a few bad apples, but if we’re going to talk about cleaning up the government, we can’t leave out the third branch,” Roth said.

Congressional Democrats could also enact legislation expanding workplace discrimination and harassment laws to cover the judiciary, an idea that has gotten bipartisan support before, and ban Supreme Court justices and judges from trading stocks and using prediction markets, Roth said.

“The larger issue is really in the lower courts and resetting the rules of the road and making it clear that while there may have been a focus on the Supreme Court over the last three years, the lower courts really shouldn’t be immune from this anticorruption push,” he said.

Term limits 

Article III of the Constitution states that Supreme Court justices and lower court judges hold their seats “during good behavior,” which has been interpreted to mean that judges have life tenure. 

But Democrats in Congress have argued that justices should be subject to term limits and rolled out proposals establishing those rules through legislation and constitutional amendments.

Several bills introduced in the House would set 18-year term limits for justices and establish regular appointments in certain years of a president’s term.

Under one of the proposals for a constitutional amendment, introduced by Maryland Democratic Rep. Johnny Olszewski, sitting justices who have been on the court for more than 18 years would have to retire. Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito and Thomas have all served more than 18 years.

One of the term-limit plans comes from a Republican lawmaker, Rep. Tom Barrett of Michigan. His proposal for a constitutional amendment would limit terms for members of the Supreme Court and lower courts to 20 years.

Barrett lost his seat for reelection in Tuesday’s midterms.

Amending the Constitution requires Congress to pass a joint resolution with support from two-thirds of both the House and Senate. Then, the proposal must be ratified by three-fourths of the states, or 38 or 50 states. 

Expanding the Supreme Court

The Constitution does not set the number of justices on the Supreme Court, and across the nation’s history, the number of people on the high court has changed six times, ranging from a low of six justices to a high of 10. There have been nine justices since 1869.

But there’s been a groundswell of calls from some Democrats for Supreme Court expansion, particularly in the wake of contentious decisions on abortion, regulatory authority  and presidential power.

One bill, from Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas, was introduced this year and would grow the number of seats on the Supreme Court from nine to 13. Past proposals from Democrats in the House and Senate would also add four seats to the high court.