The public’s favorability rating for the Supreme Court has hit a new low since the justices’ consequential decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June, allowing states to limit or restrict abortion access severely.
Data collected by the Pew Research Center show the court’s favorability is at the lowest point it has been since 2015, when the court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage. The latest poll shows just 28% of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents view the Supreme Court favorably, marking an 18-point decrease since January and a 40-point drop since 2020.
Conversely, Republican views of the high court have increased by 8 points since the start of 2022, according to the survey, conducted between Aug. 1-14. Pew highlighted that the partisan gap in favorable views is “wider by far than at any point in 35 years of polling on the court.”
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The combined data of all political dispositions show just 48% of the public sees the Supreme Court as favorable, which aligns most closely to the perception of the high court in the 2015 ruling over Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage.
When a leaked draft opinion was published by Politico in early May showing the high court’s 6-3 Republican-appointed majority was poised to overturn Roe, it ignited weeks of protests outside the court and resulted in the placement of an unscalable fence outside the building, which was removed the last weekend of August. The building has remained closed to the public since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
Both Republican- and Democratic-appointed justices on the high court have spoken gravely about the court’s perception, with particular uncertainty raised by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
“Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” Sotomayor said in December. “I don’t see how it is possible.” Notably, she spoke more positively in June about “continuing the battle each day to regain the public’s confidence” but did not discuss the leaked draft, an incident Chief Justice John Roberts decried as “absolutely appalling.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, one of six justices who voted to overturn abortion precedent on the June 24 opinion in Dobbs. v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, has also opined on the public’s perception of the institution in light of the leak.
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“I do think that what happened at the court is tremendously bad. I wonder how long we’re going to have these institutions at the rate we’re undermining them,” Thomas said in May.
Justices are slated to meet back for the Supreme Court’s opening conference on Sept. 28. The fall term begins Oct. 3.
