Republican legislators plan to pack yet another court that stands in their way

Republicans in the Utah Legislature are at war with the state Supreme Court over a constitutional ban on gerrymandering. Just days before the Utah GOP filed a notice of appeal to revive their gerrymandered congressional map, Republican lawmakers revealed they intended to pack the high court. GOP Gov. Spencer Cox recently signed on to the idea, and it seems headed for passage. 

House Majority Leader Casey Snider (R) laid out his motivations for packing the court in a recent interview. He claimed the state Supreme Court “has moved so far afield from where we expect them to be that it’s actually undermining their credibility.” 

The new court packing plan would add two members to the five-justice Utah Supreme Court, a move that some have advocated for as the state has grown in recent decades. Though every sitting justice is a Republican appointee, they were chosen through the state’s “merit selection” process. A committee screens applicants and sends the governor a list of the most qualified candidates, one of whom is nominated and sent to the GOP-led state Senate for confirmation. 

Without changes to this system, it’s not clear how much the addition of two justices would change the ideology of the court. After all, the 2024 ruling to reject the legislature’s attempt to undermine the gerrymandering ban was unanimous. And a 2025 law review article posited that court packing plans are “less appealing to policymakers in states with more depoliticized, merit-based judicial selection and retention systems.” 

That being said, Cox could play hardball with the nominations. Republican governors in other states have clashed with or manipulated merit selection commissions to demand that right-wing applicants be included among the potential nominees. And GOP lawmakers in other states have packed their commissions with more appointees from the executive branch. 

Republicans are pushing for changes to the system, and some want the power to put any judge on the ballot before their terms are up. Snider floated the idea of electing judges in partisan races. After lawmakers in North Carolina and Ohio made appellate court races partisan, the GOP elected new high court majorities that backtracked on constitutional bans on gerrymandering. Snider implied that partisan elections would instill “confidence in the impartiality” of the courts. 

But if Utah Republicans are truly concerned with undermining confidence in the courts, they should cease their attacks on judges for protecting democracy and honoring the voters’ decisions. They repeatedly attacked Judge Dianna Gibson for protecting the voter-approved ban on gerrymandering and striking down unfair congressional districts. They even introduced articles of impeachment. Utah lawmakers also lashed out at the state Supreme Court for limiting their ability to undermine the voters’ amendments, as well as rulings that protected the rights of transgender kids and pregnant people. 

Former Justice Michael Zimmerman argued that adding two justices wouldn’t necessarily mean faster decisions by the court, as some Republicans claimed. The state bar reached a similar conclusion. One GOP lawmaker cited the “evolving complexities” of the law, but Zimmerman said this only means that “they don’t agree with what the legislator would like them to be deciding.” 

Zimmerman defended the sitting justices as highly qualified and described the court as an important check on the political branches. “An autocracy is very efficient,” he said. “It’s also tremendously perilous for anybody that doesn’t agree with the autocrat. … In the United States, we’ve opted for fairness and process as a primary value.”

Democratic lawmakers criticized the proposal to pack the court and noted that sitting justices haven’t asked for it. State Sen. Stephanie Pitcher said, “The urgency with which my colleagues suddenly feel we need to expand the Supreme Court has very little to do with these pretextual reasons about caseload, and everything to do with the fact that my colleagues are getting rulings they’re not happy with.”

Ten years ago, Arizona saw Republicans successfully pack their state’s highest court. State lawmakers added two seats, stacked the merit selection commission and created one of the most extreme right-wing majorities in the country. Georgia lawmakers did something similar in 2016 and erased a majority of Democratic appointees. The chief justices in both states opposed the plans and rejected claims that the new justices would help with their workload. 

In December 2016, after North Carolina voters elected a liberal majority to their state supreme court, some Republicans wanted legislators to add two new seats, in time for the lame-duck governor to fill them. They backed down after massive protests at the state Capitol, but they tried again in 2018, putting an amendment on the ballot that would’ve given them power to fill judicial vacancies. If the amendment had passed and the Republican high court candidate won, lawmakers could have packed the court to create a GOP majority. But voters derailed this plan. 

Republicans in several states have floated similar ideas in the decade since the 2016 court packing schemes. Professor Marin Levy of Duke Law School wrote a law review article on the trend in 2020 and found proposals in 10 states to change the size of state supreme courts. In Florida, Montana, and Washington state, the proposals were an explicit response to rulings the legislators didn’t like. 

Democrats in some states have pushed for court expansion. However, their efforts have looked to diversify their judiciaries. For example, when Virginia Democrats expanded their state’s Court of Appeals in 2021, they created a more diverse court, with more Black women and former public defenders. 

But most Democrats across the Potomac in Washington have hesitated to endorse the idea of packing or even reforming the U.S. Supreme Court, even as it takes a wrecking ball to our rights and protects a far-right authoritarian. Democratic presidential candidates should call on Congress to expand the court or explore reforms like jurisdiction-stripping if they win in 2028. And congressional candidates should add court reform to their platforms. 

Republicans in state capitols have been playing judicial hardball for well over a decade. Democrats in Washington, D.C., should take a note from them. If a court stands in the way of their agenda, they try to pack it.

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Billy Corriher is the state courts manager for People’s Parity Project and a longtime advocate for fair courts and progressive judges. As a Democracy Docket contributor, Billy writes about voting and election state court cases in North Carolina and across the country.