Pete Buttigieg Wants to Pack Supreme Court With 13 Justices

Pete Buttigieg Wants to Pack Supreme Court With 13 Justices

Former Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg went on Fox News Friday to pitch a plan that would hand politicians four new seats on the Supreme Court and to argue that the institution needs to be fundamentally restructured.

Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network called out what Buttigieg is really doing, including the clip of him making his case on Fox News.

Pete Buttigieg is doubling down on his proposal for Supreme Court "reform" by calling for court packing in an attempt to undermine the Court.

The Democrats are upset that this Supreme Court isn’t a forum to impose its radical agenda. pic.twitter.com/pA6gG8tza1

— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) July 24, 2026

“The legitimacy of the Supreme Court is, I believe, the lowest it’s ever been in the eyes of the American people. It’s come to feel like a nakedly partisan institution. We could do some things about that. At a minimum, term limits so that you know for each presidential term how many Supreme Court appointments are going to go with it. I also think we would be better off with a court that has something like 13 justices that would match the number of districts that we have in the federal system, and ideally appoint them in a way that isn’t so partisan.”

There is an immediate factual problem with Buttigieg’s pitch. The federal system does not have 13 districts. It has 94 federal judicial districts and 13 appellate courts; 12 regional circuits and the Federal Circuit. Buttigieg confused the district courts with the appellate circuits while arguing for a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s highest court.

That error is not even the biggest problem with the proposal.

Increasing the number of justices from nine to 13 is court packing, regardless of how Buttigieg dresses it up. The Constitution does not set the size of the Court, so Congress technically has the power to change it, but the Court has sat at nine seats since 1869, and every serious attempt to alter that number has been understood as an effort to capture the Court for political ends.

Buttigieg also endorsed term limits and expressed interest in a so-called “balanced bench.” Under one version of that plan, the Court would expand further still, to 15 members. Five seats would be tied to Democratic appointments, five to Republican appointments, and those ten justices would then unanimously select five more. The effect would be a court designed by politicians, for politicians.

Buttigieg hedged that he is not committed to any single proposal. He was less equivocal about the stakes, warning that the country faces a choice between “reform” and “catastrophe” if confidence in the Court keeps falling.

The Fox News appearance was not a one-off. It fits a pattern.

On July 12, speaking at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Liberty and Justice Celebration, Buttigieg called for   the Electoral College and demanded a Supreme Court that he considers more “legitimate.”

“We need to immediately get to work to build something better, like a political system where everyone’s vote counts the same, and the person who gets the most votes wins the election. We need a Supreme Court that is legitimate and trustworthy in the eyes of the American people.”

He also called for a constitutional amendment to curb political spending in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

Buttigieg is widely regarded as a likely 2028 presidential candidate. He is building his platform around the proposition that the constitutional order, the Electoral College, an independent Supreme Court, and existing campaign finance law need to be restructured to produce results he prefers.

Calling that “reform” does not make the power grab any less obvious. It just gives it a better-sounding name.

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