Representative Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat who announced last week he will not seek reelection, introduced an impeachment resolution Thursday against Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. The six-article filing has no co-sponsors, no path through a Republican-controlled House, and no realistic chance of advancing to the Senate floor. What it does have is a clear political purpose: another salvo in the left's long campaign to delegitimize a court whose decisions they do not like.
Cohen's resolution accuses Roberts of allowing the Supreme Court to become "a political instrument," alleges he enabled minority rule, empowered the wealthy, shielded the executive branch from accountability, issued arbitrary rulings, and failed to recuse himself from cases linked to his wife's legal recruiting work. Newsweek reported on the resolution and its contents, noting that Cohen described the court as "understood as biased: with decisions designed to benefit Republicans at the expense of representative government, seemingly contradictory and unexplained orders, and a pattern of ethical breaches that raises questions about the role of the wealthy."
That is a mouthful. It is also a wish list dressed up as a constitutional filing.
The six articles read less like a legal indictment and more like a progressive policy grievance sheet. Article I, titled "Failure of Stewardship: Politization of the Court," accuses Roberts of allowing the court to become partisan through its handling of election and redistricting cases. Article II, "Violation of Oaths: Entrenchment of Minority Rule," targets decisions in Rucho v. Common Cause and Louisiana v. Callais, arguing Roberts enabled partisan gerrymandering and weakened voting rights protections.
The Supreme Court's late-April opinion in the Louisiana case limited the reach of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Tennessee Republicans moved quickly afterward to redraw congressional districts, a fact Cohen's allies have seized on as evidence of partisan intent. But the court rejected Louisiana's race-based congressional map on legal grounds, not partisan ones, and the ruling applied to both parties' redistricting efforts.
Article III, "Violation of Oath: Empowering the Rich Over the Poor," takes aim at campaign finance rulings including Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC. Article IV targets Roberts' opinion in Trump v. United States, the presidential immunity case, claiming it undermined constitutional checks and balances. Article V accuses the court of relying on unexplained emergency docket rulings that lack "meaningful analysis." Article VI alleges Roberts failed to recuse himself from cases involving law firms connected to his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts.
The resolution concludes that Roberts "has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as the Chief Justice" and "warrants impeachment and trial and removal from office."
Under the Constitution, federal judges may be impeached by the House and convicted by a two-thirds vote in the Senate for "high crimes and misdemeanors." Only one Supreme Court justice, Samuel Chase, in 1804, has ever been impeached by the House. The Senate acquitted him. The bar is extraordinarily high, and nothing in Cohen's resolution clears it.
Not a single House member has co-sponsored the filing. Republicans narrowly control the chamber, so the resolution will not receive a hearing, let alone a vote. Cohen himself is on his way out of Congress. This is a parting shot from a lawmaker with nothing left to lose politically, and it tells you more about the Democratic Party's frustration with the court than about any genuine misconduct by the chief justice.
The broader pattern is unmistakable. Democrats have spent years trying to weaken public confidence in the Supreme Court after a series of decisions that cut against progressive priorities. The court overturned Roe v. Wade, curtailed affirmative action in college admissions, expanded gun rights, and narrowed federal regulatory authority. Rather than win those arguments through legislation or the amendment process, many on the left have turned to institutional warfare, scrambling to reframe unfavorable rulings as evidence of corruption rather than legitimate legal disagreement.
Democrats in Congress proposed legislation last year to create a mechanism allowing justices to be investigated and potentially removed for ethical misconduct. Some have floated imposing 18-year term limits to replace lifetime appointments. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the court "illegitimate," prompting sharp pushback from President Trump, who questioned whether Jeffries himself should face consequences for that rhetoric.
The chief justice addressed the political climate around the court in remarks this month at a conference of lawyers and judges in Pennsylvania. Roberts did not mention Cohen's resolution specifically, but his comments spoke directly to the criticism driving it.
"I think at a very basic level, people think we're making policy decisions, [that] we're saying we think this is what things should be as opposed to this is what the law provides. I think they view us as truly political actors, which I don't think is an accurate understanding of what we do. I would say that's the main difficulty."
Roberts added that the court is "not simply part of the political process, and there's a reason for that, and I'm not sure people grasp that as much as is appropriate."
That distinction, between legal interpretation and political preference, is exactly what Cohen's resolution collapses. Every article in the filing treats a judicial outcome the congressman disagrees with as evidence of misconduct. If that standard applied, every losing litigant in every contested case could demand impeachment of the judges who ruled against them.
Democrats point to polling data to argue the court has lost the public's trust. Pew Research data from 2025 showed favorability of the Supreme Court dropped 22 percent over the previous five years. Less than half of Americans, 48 percent, now view the court favorably, while half hold an unfavorable view.
But those numbers break sharply along partisan lines. Seventy-one percent of Republicans view the court favorably. Only 26 percent of Democrats do. The decline in favorability tracks almost perfectly with the left's sustained campaign to portray the court as illegitimate, a campaign Cohen's resolution is the latest chapter in.
A Public Religion Research Institute survey last year found 75 percent of Americans back term limits for Supreme Court justices, including 67 percent of Republicans and 86 percent of Democrats. That broad support suggests genuine public appetite for structural reform. But term limits and impeachment are fundamentally different conversations. One is a policy debate. The other is an accusation of unfitness for office.
Law professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University, writing for Fox News, has noted what critics of the court often leave out: "the majority of opinions by the Supreme Court are unanimous or nearly unanimous. Comparatively, few cases break along strict ideological 6-3 lines." The court's 6-3 conservative majority, shaped by three appointments during President Trump's first term, draws constant fire from the left. But the portrait of a court locked in permanent partisan warfare does not match the actual output.
The court adopted a formal code of conduct for the first time in 2023, partly in response to ethics controversies involving Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Whether that code goes far enough is a fair question. Whether it justifies impeaching the chief justice is not.
Cohen framed his resolution in sweeping terms. "I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that while John Roberts remains Chief Justice, correcting this misconduct and ensuring the Justices and the Court itself comply with their legal obligations will be impossible," he said.
That conclusion rests on the premise that decisions Cohen disagrees with constitute "misconduct." It is the same logic that has driven calls to pack the court, impose term limits by statute, strip jurisdiction from the justices, and publicly brand the institution as corrupt. The goal is not accountability. The goal is leverage, political pressure on an independent branch of government that refuses to deliver the outcomes one party demands.
Republicans have accused Democrats of attempting to delegitimize the court after rulings unfavorable to liberal priorities. Cohen's resolution, filed by a lame-duck congressman with zero support from his own caucus, reinforces that accusation. It is a press release masquerading as a constitutional proceeding.
The impeachment mechanism exists for genuine misconduct, bribery, corruption, abuse of power in the traditional sense. The impeachment power has been tested and debated in recent years across both parties. Treating it as a tool to punish legal reasoning you find objectionable cheapens the instrument and the Constitution it serves.
The Supreme Court has become a flash point heading into the 2026 midterm cycle, and both parties will continue to use it as a rallying cry. But there is a difference between arguing the court got a case wrong and arguing the chief justice should be removed for doing his job.
When you try to impeach a judge for ruling against you, you are not defending the Constitution. You are telling the country you have given up on persuading it.
