Biden tells lawmakers he’s considering major Supreme Court reform

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is preparing to approve major Supreme Court reform proposals and briefed some members of Congress on his intentions over the weekend, three sources familiar with the plans said Tuesday.

Proposals under serious consideration include legislation to limit justices’ terms and establish an updated ethics code that would be binding and enforceable, one source said. Those policies, which have not yet been finalized, could be implemented in the coming weeks, a new approach for a president who has long been skeptical of restructuring the Supreme Court.

A White House spokesman declined to comment.

Biden told lawmakers from the Congressional Progressive Caucus during a virtual meeting Saturday that he has been consulting with constitutional scholars on the issue for more than a month, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

“I’m going to need your help and your advice on how we should do what I’m going to do there. I want to make sure that we have a closer working relationship because we’re all in this together,” Biden told lawmakers, though he did not go into specifics of the policy in question, the source said.

The Washington Post was first to report Biden’s plans.

Two other sources told NBC News that Biden told lawmakers he would propose broad reforms, without giving them specifics, but that members of the call understood him to be referring to term limits and ethics rules. The call took place Saturday before the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.

“Look, it’s not an exaggeration to suggest that Trump is literally an existential threat, an existential threat to the very constitution of democracy that we say we care about. And I mean if this guy wins, he’s not going to be, and now, especially with this Supreme Court giving him the kind of scope of — I don’t need to get into the Supreme Court right now — anyway, but I need your help,” Biden said, according to a source who provided the excerpt.

Changing the structure of the Supreme Court would require Congress to pass a new law. That is extremely unlikely as long as Republicans control the House of Representatives, because the party is satisfied with the 6-3 conservative majority it has built on the Supreme Court.

But the proposals could become a useful PR tool for Biden on the campaign trail. And if Democrats win the election, they could have a good chance of passing. Democrats have been mobilizing voters against the Supreme Court, citing unpopular decisions like the removal of federal abortion rights and a series of recent reports detailing apparent ethical lapses by individual justices.

Last month, Senate Democrats tried to pass a Supreme Court ethics bill but ran into opposition from Republicans. In the House, Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Don Beyer, D-Va., introduced legislation that would impose an 18-year term limit on future justices, creating vacancies. to be filled during each four-year presidential term and to prevent retirements for partisan reasons.

Khanna praised Biden for his openness to the idea, noting that he first introduced a term limits bill in 2020.

“Since then, we have been advocating for the president to champion this reform,” Khanna told NBC News Tuesday. “It is a big step for him to now call for reasonable term limits for the court and a code of judicial ethics.”