Democrats Trying To Repeat History With FDR Court-Packing Ruse

With the 2026 midterms approaching and the 2028 presidential election right behind them, Democrats are raising a discredited ruse to pack the Supreme Court with additional justices.

Just last month, Democrats’ 2024 presidential nominee Kamala Harris floated the idea of Democrats packing the Supreme Court as part of a “no bad idea brainstorm.” Meanwhile, Democrats in Virginia recently threatened to pack their state Supreme Court to circumvent a ruling they didn’t like. Democrats have lit the match for this partisan firestorm and liberal elites are fanning the flames. This week The Hill published an opinion article claiming, “Expanding the Supreme Court isn’t court-packing.”

“Adding four seats under the next Democratic trifecta would actually be unpacking the court,” the author argued.

Democrats clearly need a history lesson: Court-packing was a bad idea in 1937, and it’s a bad idea in 2026. Nine decades ago, the nation’s 32nd president unleashed a sweeping expansion of the federal government with his New Deal program. Amid the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) sought to address high unemployment, a collapsed banking system, and an agricultural crisis in rural America with micromanagement of the U.S. economy. 

Congress passed more than a dozen major laws in FDR’s first 100 days. Many of those bumped into our constitutional system of checks and balances, which aims to prevent any one of the federal government’s three branches from gaining too much power.

During FDR’s first term, the Supreme Court ruled that several New Deal laws usurped states’ sovereignty, improperly delegated legislative power to the executive branch, violated constitutional authority by executive overreach, and unconstitutionally restricted individual liberties. The bloc of conservative justices reining in the president’s authority was known as the “Four Horsemen.” 

FDR cooked up a plan to secure his agenda by reshaping the court, packing it with judges of his choosing to outflank the Constitution. In cahoots with Attorney General Homer Cummings, they hatched a plan called the Judicial Procedures Reform Act of 1937. This would have allowed the president to appoint one additional justice for every sitting justice older than 70, enabling FDR to increase the number of Supreme Court Justices from nine to as many as 15, as well as add up to 44 judges to lower federal courts.

Yet the Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to determine the size of the federal judiciary. In 1789, when the Judiciary Act was first signed establishing the Supreme Court, Congress set the number at six. It increased the number as the country expanded, but that number has been set at nine since 1869.

For a brief time, justices worked double duty and spent part of the year traveling a judicial circuit to hear cases; however, the practice of justices “riding circuit” ended more than a century ago. Thus, the present-day argument to match the number of Supreme Court justices to the number of federal circuits is pure partisan poppycock, much like FDR’s failed power grab in 1937.

FDR’s duplicitous effort to pack the court not only breached the separation of powers, it also insulted the justices with the disingenuous assertion they couldn’t handle the workload. FDR told Congress the justices were “slow and infirm.” That raised the ire of Chief Justice Charles Evan Hughes. In a letter presented to the Senate Judiciary Committee, he bashed the court-packing plan, writing it would “impair” the efficiency of the court, creating “more judges to hear, more judges to confer, more judges to discuss, more judges to be convinced and to decide.”

FDR used his “Fireside Chat”  on March 9, 1937, to try and win the court of public opinion. He described the three branches of government as a three-horse team: “Two of the horses are pulling in unison today; the third is not.” 

But the American people weren’t buying it, and neither were their elected representatives, including a Democrat-controlled Congress. Iowa’s own former President Hoover exposed the outrageous effort to reduce “the sword of the people” to “a tool of the executive.” In speeches across the country, he warned against the reckless precedent it would set: “ [B]y adding members of the Court, any succeeding President can do it.”

On June 14, 1937, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued a scathing report on FDR’s judicial reforms, calling it “needless, futile, and utterly dangerous.” The committee urged the Senate to reject the plan “so emphatically … that its parallel will never again be so presented to the free representatives of the free people of America.” The Senate defeated FDR’s court-packing plan a month later, preserving the Supreme Court’s institutional integrity. 

FDR’s power grab is a teachable moment for 21st-century déjà vu Democrats. Since they can’t bulldoze their policies through the democratic process, they want to pack the court to ensure they never lose.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned that Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh would “pay the price” for adhering to the Constitution, while House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has called the Supreme Court a “disgrace” and a “corrupt MAGA majority.” That rhetoric is reckless and harmful to our republic. These orchestrated attacks on the judiciary undermine public trust in the institution tasked with upholding the rule of law, protecting individual rights and our system of checks and balances.

As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a lifelong Iowa farmer, I understand the futility of shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted. That’s why I support a constitutional amendment to keep nine Supreme Court justices on the bench at a time. As our nation celebrates the 250th birthday of America, we must safeguard the independence of the federal judiciary to protect our constitutional freedoms and way of life for generations to come.

Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.