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Republicans are normalizing the one reform they should fear most - Ian Millhiser @ Vox [View all]
Vox - Gift LinkUtah’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox, signed legislation over the weekend that will add two seats to his state’s supreme court — seats that Cox plans to fill shortly. The law is widely viewed as an effort to move Utah’s highest court to the right after it handed down several decisions that Republicans disliked.
In September, the pre-packed Utah Supreme Court sided with plaintiffs challenging Utah’s GOP-friendly congressional maps. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, in recent years, Utah courts also “blocked Utah’s ban on most abortions, temporarily stopped a law banning transgender girls from playing high school sports, and found the state’s school voucher program unconstitutional.”
“Court-packing,” or adding seats to a court in order to change its ideological or partisan makeup, is often spoken of as if it were the political equivalent of detonating a nuclear weapon. In 1937, shortly after winning reelection in a landslide, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed adding six seats to a US Supreme Court that frequently sabotaged his New Deal policies. But, even at the height of his power, Roosevelt struggled to build support for his plan. Some historians blame his court-packing proposal for shattering the New Deal coalition in Congress.
Since then, national leaders have typically spoken of court-packing with trepidation. In 2020, for example, as Republicans were consolidating their 6-3 supermajority on the US Supreme Court, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden warned that he was “not a fan of court-packing” as a solution to Republican partisanship on the high court.
But, at the state level, Republicans now engage in court-packing often enough that it has become just a normal part of partisan judicial politics. In 2016, Republicans in Georgia and Arizona did the same thing Utah just did, adding seats to their state supreme courts in an apparent effort to move those courts to the right. So that’s three packed supreme courts in a single decade.
In September, the pre-packed Utah Supreme Court sided with plaintiffs challenging Utah’s GOP-friendly congressional maps. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, in recent years, Utah courts also “blocked Utah’s ban on most abortions, temporarily stopped a law banning transgender girls from playing high school sports, and found the state’s school voucher program unconstitutional.”
“Court-packing,” or adding seats to a court in order to change its ideological or partisan makeup, is often spoken of as if it were the political equivalent of detonating a nuclear weapon. In 1937, shortly after winning reelection in a landslide, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed adding six seats to a US Supreme Court that frequently sabotaged his New Deal policies. But, even at the height of his power, Roosevelt struggled to build support for his plan. Some historians blame his court-packing proposal for shattering the New Deal coalition in Congress.
Since then, national leaders have typically spoken of court-packing with trepidation. In 2020, for example, as Republicans were consolidating their 6-3 supermajority on the US Supreme Court, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden warned that he was “not a fan of court-packing” as a solution to Republican partisanship on the high court.
But, at the state level, Republicans now engage in court-packing often enough that it has become just a normal part of partisan judicial politics. In 2016, Republicans in Georgia and Arizona did the same thing Utah just did, adding seats to their state supreme courts in an apparent effort to move those courts to the right. So that’s three packed supreme courts in a single decade.
Republicans are normalizing the one reform they should fear most www.vox.com/politics/477...
— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser.bsky.social) 2026-02-02T20:16:32.500Z
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