On Tuesday, a group of Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a bill that would radically change the Supreme Court by imposing term limits on all justices.
As reported by The Hill, the bill is called the “Supreme Court Tenure Establishment and Retirement Modernization Act.” The legislation would give the president the authority to nominate Supreme Court justices every two years, in the first and third years following each presidential election. The bill was introduced by Congressman Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), with Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Karen Bass (D-Calif.), Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), and David Cicilline (D-R.I.) all serving as co-sponsors.
Under the new bill, the justices who have been on the court for the longest period of time would be given senior status first. Those justices would serve for no more than 18 years before retiring from active service on the bench, and would instead be given “senior status.” Subsequently, all of the current justices on the Supreme Court would be gradually given this senior status one at a time, as more justices are confirmed to the court under the new bill’s conditions.
The purpose of the “senior” justices would be to essentially serve as temporary fill-in justices in the event that the number of active justices drops below nine for any reason, such as a vacancy, disability, or “disqualification.”
In his statement announcing the new legislation, Johnson repeated the new talking point from the Left that claims, with no evidence, that the Supreme Court “is increasingly facing a legitimacy crisis” due to its 6-3 majority of justices that have been appointed by Republican presidents.
“Five of the six conservative justices on the bench were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote, and they are now racing to impose their out-of-touch agenda on the American people, who do not want it,” Johnson said. “Term limits are a necessary step toward restoring balance to this radical, unrestrained majority on the court.”
Nadler, who has been a leading figure in the fight to deliberately alter the court to cater to Democrats’ political desires, said that term limits are “essential” due to “all the harmful and out-of-touch rulings from the Supreme Court this last year,” referring to the court’s historic rulings on abortion and the Second Amendment, among other key issues.
“Otherwise, we will be left with backwards-looking majority for a generation or more,” Nadler continued.
Legislation similar to Johnson’s term limits bill was also introduced in the U.S. Senate by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
Nadler and other Democrats have previously introduced unprecedented legislation to expand the size of the Supreme Court, proposing that four more justices be added in order to give the court a total of 13 justices; doing so under Joe Biden would turn the court from a 6-3 conservative court to a 7-6 liberal court.