Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Catherine Cortez Masto have reintroduced the Supreme Court Review Act, aiming to restore legislative authority by allowing Congress to quickly override Supreme Court rulings with a simple majority. The move comes amid escalating Democratic criticism of the conservative-majority Court, highlighted by a recent emergency order unblocking a controversial Trump administration voter database and public criticism from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson over the Court's use of its emergency docket.
Support for Supreme Court Review Act
- ▪U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Catherine Cortez Masto reintroduced the Supreme Court Review Act on September 25, 2026.
- ▪The Supreme Court Review Act, reintroduced by Senators Whitehouse and Cortez Masto, is endorsed by advocacy groups including Public Citizen, People for the American Way, Fix the Court, and the Center for Biological Diversity
- ▪The Supreme Court Review Act is cosponsored by Democratic Senators Mazie Hirono, Richard Blumenthal, Alex Padilla, Ron Wyden, and Elizabeth Warren.
Provisions of Supreme Court Review Act
- ▪The Supreme Court Review Act, reintroduced by Senators Whitehouse and Cortez Masto, would establish expedited procedures allowing the Senate to pass laws responding to Supreme Court decisions by a simple majority
- ▪The Supreme Court Review Act, reintroduced by Senators Whitehouse and Cortez Masto, would limit the expedited legislative process to recent Supreme Court rulings and exclude non-germane changes to federal law
- ▪The Supreme Court Review Act, reintroduced by Senators Whitehouse and Cortez Masto, would codify a process for Congress to pass new laws in response to Supreme Court decisions that interpret federal statutes or roll back constitutional rights
Democratic lawmakers criticize Supreme Court
- ▪Senator Sheldon Whitehouse stated that the right-wing majority of the Supreme Court is delivering goods to special interests and that Congress must protect the public when the Court abuses its power.
- ▪Representative Jamie Raskin accused the Roberts court of returning to political white supremacy and warned that its Voting Rights Act rulings could lead to an all-white congressional delegation from the deep South by 2028.
- ▪Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized the Supreme Court as becoming an ethical and substantive morass, while Representative Adam Schiff called it a partisan and retrograde institution.
Supreme Court order on SAVE database
- ▪The Supreme Court's emergency order on the SAVE database puts on hold a June 2026 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, who had declared the expanded SAVE database illegal
- ▪The Supreme Court issued an emergency order on September 25, 2026, temporarily unblocking the Trump administration's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) voter database.
- ▪The Supreme Court's three liberal justices publicly dissented from the emergency order issued September 25, 2026, unblocking the SAVE voter database
Debatable claims
- ▪The Supreme Court Review Act would undermine the constitutional separation of powers
- ▪Establishing term limits for Supreme Court justices requires a constitutional amendment
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