9.4.25
The U.S. Supreme Court's approval rating remains near a historic low, new polling has found. According to a Pew Research Center survey, half of Americans hold an unfavorable opinion of the Supreme Court. This is 22 percentage points lower than in August 2020 when 70 percent of Americans had a positive opinion about the court. The Pew Research Survey of 3,554 people was conducted between August 4 and 10. The margin of error was +/- 1.8 percentage points. The polling comes as the conservative-leaning court has faced criticism for appearing to side with President Donald Trump. Between April and July, the Court ruled in Trump's favor 16 consecutive times. Just this week, Trump has called on the Supreme Court to overturn a federal appeals court ruling that found the president's broad, global tariffs to be illegal. Individual justices have come under scrutiny, like Justice Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving member of the court, who faced a backlash for accepting undisclosed gifts from a Republican megadonor.
Justice Samuel Alito was also criticized in 2024 when it was revealed that an upside-down American flag—associated with Trump's false claims of election fraud—was flown outside his home days after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a bid to prevent certification of Biden's election victory. Meanwhile, a July YouGov poll found similar ill-feeling towards the court. Some 28 percent of respondents said they believe the court is "impartial in its decisions," while 53 percent believe the court "tended to favor one group more than another." Kate Shaw, a legal scholar and former clerk for former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, told The New York Times' that the Supreme Court has increasingly behaved as a partisan institution in rulings that have benefited Trump. "In particular, all they have done to shore up his presidency in the dark of night, where they are not going to be held accountable by the public for doing it. I think there is a lot of additional evidence that they really just are partisan justices in support of Donald Trump."