Supreme Court approval hits new low: Poll

With the Supreme Court in summer recess after issuing its final opinions of this term, a new poll revealed confidence in the court has dropped, driven by a decline in Republican support. 

A new Gallup poll released on Tuesday showed confidence in the court reached only 33 percent, a record low in 26 years and six-point decrease since 2025.

The poll found that a fall in Republican support drove this decline, with approval dropping to 58 percent compared to 79 percent last September. Support among independents hovered at 35 percent, and Democrats, whose perception of the Supreme Court has been low since a 6-3 conservative majority was established during President Trump’s first term, stayed relatively the same at 12 percent.

The growing lack of confidence follows controversial decisions by the Supreme Court to affirm Trump administration policy that cut off temporary legal protections for thousands of Haitians and Syrians. The policy removed both groups from the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) list, which protects citizens of certain countries from deportation and creates a path for work authorization.

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the decision would result in more people dying as it would leave people fleeing persecution or violence more vulnerable to “dangerous conditions.”

Other decisions that expanded presidential power included strengthening an administration’s ability to fire officials at independent agencies. This ruling overturned 91 years of precedent and affirmed the right of President Trump to fire former Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic appointee, and other top officials.

“The result is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before,” Sotomayor wrote in dissent, joined by fellow liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Still, the court ruled against President Trump in his attacks on birthright citizenship and use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariffs against foreign nations.

A bill originally introduced in 2022 by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), called the Supreme Court Tenure Establishment and Retirement Modernization Act, proposed 18-year term limits for current and future justices.

“The TERM Act is necessary because lifetime tenure on the United States Supreme Court leads to a Court that is insulated from, and unaccountable to, the American people, which is bad for democracy,” Johnson said when reintroducing the bill in September 2023.

The Gallup poll was conducted July 1-19 and included 1,200 respondents. The margin of sampling error was 4 percentage points.