Sen. Chris Coons said he’s not completely opposed to the idea of packing the Supreme Court.
In an interview Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper, the Delaware Democrat said he is “not a fan of expanding the court” but will remain open to the possibility of expanding the size of the high court.
“Well, Jake, like Joe Biden, I’m not a fan of expanding the court, but we have a few weeks here to see whether there are four Republicans who will step back from this precipice,” Coons said. “It is President Trump who has pressed for this nominee. So he can have a key vote to overturn the Affordable Care Act. In the middle of a pandemic.”
Coons continued, “And then, if we happen to be in the fact pattern where we have a President Biden, we’ll have to look at what the right steps are to rebalance our federal judiciary.”
“So your mind is open to adding justices to the Supreme Court?” Tapper asked.
“Yes,” Coons affirmed.
Though Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has pledged to reveal his position on court packing sometime before the election, there are few establishment Democrats who have expressed their support for the idea.
The issue of court packing has risen to the forefront of the 2020 presidential contest after President Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. With little Democrats having little recourse to stop Senate Republicans from confirming Barrett before the election, she is poised to be Trump’s third pick to join the high court.
Speaking with MSNBC’s Joy Reid, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that “everything is on the table,” referring not only to adding more judges to the Supreme Court but also abolishing the Senate filibuster and granting statehood to Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts is one of the few senators to explicitly express support for the idea.
“Mitch McConnell won’t back down, and neither will we. We can defeat him if we mobilize and organize,” Markey tweeted. “That is why we must make it absolutely clear that if McConnell attempts to fill this seat, we will abolish the filibuster and expand the court when we retake the Senate.”
During the Democratic presidential primaries, Tom Steyer was the sole candidate to endorse court packing. Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Kamala Harris of California, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have indicated that they were “open to it” during their campaigns, according to the Washington Post.
