Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is one of four governors nationwide who have endorsed a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution to limit the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices to the current count of nine.
The proposed amendment states: “The Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine Justices.”
Other governors who have endorsed this “Keep Nine” Amendment include Doug Ducey of Arizona, Mike DeWine of Ohio, and Pete Ricketts of Nebraska.
This, according to an emailed press release that members of the Coalition to Preserve an Independent U.S. Supreme Court emailed this week.
“We are fighting to keep an independent Supreme Court that has had nine justices for 150 years,” the press release said.
“A majority of Republican Members of Congress, including more three-fourths of House Republicans, a unanimous vote of the Republican National Committee (RNC), the National Federation of Republican Women, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Freedom Works, Americans for Limited Government, and Tea Party Patriots Action and conservatives like former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese and Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist are among those now backing the Keep Nine Amendment,” according to the press release.
“The ‘Keep Nine’ Amendment to ban Court packing, first introduced by a Democrat in Congress, is critical to exposing the ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ strategy of many Democratic candidates in swing states who now claim to oppose Court packing but won’t back a bipartisan Amendment to make sure it never happens.”
U.S. Reps. Collin C. Peterson (D-MN-07) and Denver Riggleman (R-VA-05) introduced the proposed amendment in October. Their stated purpose was to permanently set the court’s makeup at nine to make sure that neither political party can ever pack the Supreme Court.
In September, former Tennessee Attorney General Paul Summers, one of the organizers of the Keep Nine Amendment, appeared on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.
Summers discussed the amendment to prevent people from adding more judges to the Supreme Court. He also went into more depth about this amendment by explaining the definition of court-packing and why it’s detrimental to the country. Summers said one reason court-packing is bad is because, “It weakens the rule of law. It also dampens the checks and balances on abuse of power by our most important third branch of government known as the judiciary.”
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
keep it Governor!