Senate Democrats "Virtually Certain" to Pass "Supreme Court Reform" Bill By Majority Vote in 2025

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on what Democrats plan on enacting with control of Congress and the White House.

The Dispatch reports that congressional Democrats are making plans to "reform" the Supreme Court and counteract recent abortion and voting rights decisions should they obtain unified control of Congress while retaining the White House. This is according to  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who appeared on a panel last Thursday during the Democratic convention where he addressed these issues.

If Democrats capture the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, Whitehouse said, Senate Democrats would be "virtually certain" to pass a "Supreme Court reform" bill by a simple majority, evading the current 60-vote requirement for legislation. The senator said Democrats would tie their Supreme Court legislation—imposing 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices and establishing ethics and recusal rules—to an omnibus package that would include a bill creating a national right to abortion and other top Democratic priorities.

"To get around the filibuster, we're going to have to have a process that allows very substantial debate from the Senate minority," Whitehouse said at an event hosted in Chicago by the Brennan Center for Justice. "We are not going to want to give the Republicans multiple stalls, multiple filibusters on this, so the bill that gets around the filibuster will be virtually certain to include permanent reproductive rights, permanent restored voting rights, getting rid of corrupting billionaire dark money, and Supreme Court reform. If you've got a bill like that moving, that's going to have spectacular tailwinds behind it." . . . .

While Vice President Harris has not publicly endorsed this plan, the Biden-Harris administration has endorsed the broad strokes of such reforms, including term limits for justices. This apparently leads Senator Whitehouse to conclude that a Harris-Walz administration would support his plan.

Whitehouse told Dispatch Politics on Thursday that he expects Harris will support legislation to enact Supreme Court term limits. "They have not gone so far as to say, 'We endorse your bill.' They have said that your bills are precisely aligned with what we are talking about," he said when asked if he had received any formal indication from Harris's campaign that the vice president supports his term-limit legislation. . . .

Whitehouse's Supreme Court term limits bill in its current form requires an intervening presidential election before taking effect, but the senator was noncommittal when asked if that's an essential piece of the legislation. "Everything is subject to the will of the Senate and the House and the input from the president as we do these things," Whitehouse told Dispatch Politics. "The point of that is that we want to make it seem a little bit less like it's an immediate targeting" of Supreme Court justices.

While this would be a big change, Rep. Raskin's remarks suggested that convention organizers did not want to make court reform a major theme, perhaps for fear of alienating moderates.

When the moderator at Thursday's Supreme Court panel asked why there had been so little talk of court reform from speakers at the Democratic convention, Raskin said that he submitted a 5,000-word speech to convention organizers, mostly focused on the Supreme Court, but was asked to cut it down to 500 words. "There was a half sentence where I described them as the kangaroo Supreme Court, and I got that in, but that was all I could get," Raskin said.

Separately, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has indicated that a change to current filibuster rules is at the top of his agenda. He previously supported passing voting rights legislation by a majority vote and has indicated a willingness to consider avoiding the filibuster for abortion rights legislation as well.