Representative Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat who recently announced he will not seek reelection, introduced an impeachment resolution against Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday. The resolution contains six articles of impeachment. It has no co-sponsors. And it has no realistic path forward in a Republican-controlled House.
That hasn't stopped Cohen from treating the gesture as a serious exercise in constitutional accountability. The resolution accuses Roberts of allowing the Supreme Court to become "a political instrument," weakening voting rights, empowering wealthy donors through campaign finance rulings, shielding the executive branch from oversight, issuing arbitrary emergency orders, and failing to recuse himself from cases tied to his wife's legal recruiting work.
The filing reads less like a constitutional indictment and more like a policy wish list from a lawmaker who doesn't like how the court has ruled. That distinction matters, and it's one Democrats have been blurring for years.
Cohen's resolution lays out six articles, each framed as a violation of Roberts' oath of office. Newsweek reported the full scope of the filing, which targets some of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions of the past two decades.
Article I alleges "Failure of Stewardship: Politicization of the Court," accusing Roberts of letting the court become a partisan tool through its handling of election and redistricting cases. Article II charges a "Violation of Oaths: Entrenchment of Minority Rule," pointing to decisions in Rucho v. Common Cause and Louisiana v. Callais as evidence that Roberts enabled partisan gerrymandering and gutted voting protections.
Article III takes aim at Roberts' role in Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC, alleging the rulings favored wealthy interests over ordinary Americans. Article IV targets the court's opinion in Trump v. United States, claiming the presidential immunity ruling undermined constitutional checks and balances.
The fifth article accuses the court of relying too heavily on unexplained emergency docket rulings that lack "meaningful analysis." The sixth alleges Roberts failed to recuse himself from cases involving law firms connected to his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, who worked as a legal recruiter.
The resolution's concluding language states that Roberts "has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States" and "warrants impeachment and trial and removal from office."
Cohen announced last week that he would forgo his reelection bid. He tied the decision to redistricting in Tennessee following the Supreme Court's late April opinion limiting the reach of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Tennessee Republicans moved quickly to redraw congressional districts after that ruling, a fact that clearly stung.
So what voters are watching is a departing congressman, with no co-sponsors and no legislative leverage, filing a resolution that Republicans will never bring to committee. The Constitution allows the House to impeach federal judges for "high crimes and misdemeanors," with conviction requiring a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Only one Supreme Court justice, Samuel Chase, in 1804, has ever been impeached by the House. The Senate acquitted him.
The chief justice has warned publicly about "personally directed hostility" toward the court, and this resolution fits squarely within the pattern he described.
Cohen framed his frustration in sweeping terms. In a statement accompanying the resolution, he said the court's decisions should be:
"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."
He added:
"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."
Notice the framing. Decisions Cohen disagrees with become "misconduct." Rulings that follow a judicial philosophy he opposes become evidence of corruption. This is the rhetorical trick at the center of the Democratic campaign against the court: redefine disagreement as illegitimacy.
Roberts himself addressed the criticism this month during remarks to a conference of lawyers and judges in Pennsylvania. His comments didn't name Cohen or any specific lawmaker, but they spoke directly to the charge that the court is merely a political body wearing robes.
"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 also noted 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."
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, has made a related point. Critics of the court, Turley noted, "do not mention is that the majority of opinions by the Supreme Court are unanimous or nearly unanimous. Comparatively, few cases break along strict ideological 6-3 lines."
That context rarely appears in Democratic talking points. The 6-3 conservative majority, shaped in part by three justices appointed during President Trump's first term, has become a fixation for the left. But the raw ratio tells you nothing about how often the justices actually divide along partisan lines. Most of the time, they don't.
Cohen's resolution is not an isolated stunt. It fits into a sustained Democratic effort to weaken public confidence in the court and build support for structural changes. Some Democrats have floated proposals to expand the number of justices. Others have pushed 18-year term limits. Last year, Democrats in Congress proposed legislation to create a mechanism for investigating and potentially removing justices for ethical misconduct.
The hostility directed at the court has not remained rhetorical. A North Carolina man recently admitted to doxing a Supreme Court justice and posting threats online, a reminder that political rhetoric about illegitimate courts can have real consequences for real people.
Polling shows the public is divided. Pew Research data from 2025 found that 48 percent of Americans view the court favorably, while 50 percent hold an unfavorable view. The partisan gap is wide: 71 percent of Republicans view the court favorably compared to just 26 percent of Democrats. Pew also found that overall favorability had dropped 22 percent over five years.
A separate survey from the Public Religion Research Institute found that 75 percent of Americans support term limits for justices, including 67 percent of Republicans, 76 percent of independents, and 86 percent of Democrats. That broad support suggests real appetite for reform, though term limits and impeachment are very different animals.
The Supreme Court itself has taken steps to address ethics concerns. In 2023, the court adopted a formal code of conduct for the first time. Whether that satisfies critics is another question, and for many Democrats, the answer is plainly no.
Internal tensions on the court have also drawn attention. Even within the liberal bloc, justices have distanced themselves from escalating rhetoric by one of their own colleagues, suggesting that the pressure campaign is creating fractures in unexpected places.
The Constitution sets a high bar for impeachment, "high crimes and misdemeanors", for good reason. The framers did not want Congress removing judges because it disliked their rulings. That would make the judiciary a subordinate branch, subject to the political whims of whoever controls the House at any given moment.
Cohen's six articles do not allege criminal conduct. They allege that Roberts presided over a court that reached conclusions Cohen finds politically objectionable. That is not impeachment. That is a press release.
The recusal allegation in Article VI, involving Roberts' wife's work as a legal recruiter, comes closest to a genuine ethics question. But the resolution offers no evidence that Roberts' participation in any specific case produced a conflict of interest that meets the constitutional standard. It raises a question and treats it as a verdict.
Meanwhile, the broader relationship between the branches of government remains tense. Even President Trump has publicly rebuked justices he appointed when their rulings cut against his agenda, a reminder that frustration with the court is bipartisan, even if the impulse to impeach is not.
Cohen is leaving Congress. His district may soon be redrawn beyond recognition. His resolution has no co-sponsors, no committee hearing scheduled, and no chance of advancing in a Republican-led House. Even if it somehow reached the Senate, a two-thirds vote for conviction would be unthinkable.
What the resolution does accomplish is signaling. It tells the Democratic base that someone is willing to say out loud what many progressive activists believe: that the conservative court is illegitimate and its chief justice should be removed. It keeps the machinery of court-delegitimization turning even when no legislative outcome is possible.
Republicans have accused Democrats of attempting to delegitimize the court, and Cohen's resolution makes that case better than any Republican press conference could.
When you can't win at the ballot box, can't win in the legislature, and can't win in court, you try to tear down the institution that keeps ruling against you. That's not accountability. That's a tantrum dressed up in constitutional language.