Lawmakers serving on the Civil Justice Committee in the Ohio House of Representatives were scheduled earlier this week to hear testimony opposing a pair of resolutions challenging the notion that the U.S. Supreme Court should be expanded.

Loveland Rep. Jean Schmidt, a Republican, and fellow Republicans — Reps. Adam Bird of Cincinnati and Gary Click of Vickery — have championed two resolutions in support of the federal Keep Nine Amendment, respectively House Concurrent Resolution 18 and House Resolution 57.

“In short, this resolution urges President Joe Biden to dissolve his Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, urges Congress to reject the House Judiciary Act of 2021 and supports Senate Joint Resolution 9, also known as the Keep Nine Amendment,” Click said of HR 57.

Schmidt said that an independent Supreme Court is an essential element of America’s system of checks and balances that protects the constitutional rights of all Americans, noting that neither presidents nor members of Congress should be permitted to undermine the independence of the Supreme Court via the so-called practice of packing it.

“The policies and actions we are watching come from Washington, D.C. are truly concerning,” Schmidt said in a press release. “If the Democrats continue their efforts to ‘pack the Supreme Court,’ they need to be aware that the American people are watching. This resolution is modeled after other resolutions across the country and, while nonbinding, we cannot sit back and allow these fundamental shifts to occur in our federal government.”

Click recalled the efforts of Pres. Franklin Roosevelt toward that end in an administration that began nearly 90 years ago.

“Roosevelt is easily remembered as a president who played politics with the high court,” the lawmaker said. “When the opinions of the court were unfavorable to his political goals, he too proposed a radical change to the court through his own court packing scheme in 1937.

“While he did not succeed in packing the court, he did achieve his political goal. Justice Owen Roberts keenly felt the political threat from the president. Not coincidentally, he began rendering opinions favorable to Roosevelt,” shifting the balance of the court from 5-4 opposing the president to 5-4 favoring the president’s political ambitions.

The change is recorded in history books as The Switch in Time that Saved Nine,” Click added.

HR 57’s joint sponsor, Bird, questioned what high-court rulings do the president and the Democratic majority in Congress believe are unfair.

“Was there a recent landmark ruling that liberals disagree with? Is there a consistent pattern of decisions that liberals feel are unfair,” he posited. “There is no reason for the current president to threaten the U.S. Supreme Court. And even if there were a perceived reason, the executive branch should leave the judicial branch alone. We have a separation of powers for a reason.”

Bird offered a number of supreme court decisions throughout history that serve as examples when the court ruling ran counter to conservative opinions — Dred Scott being the first.

“In this case, the court ruled that Dred Scott, a former slave who was living in a free state, was not entitled to his freedom because African-Americans were not, and could never be, citizens of the United States,” Bird continued. “This decision outraged abolitionists and members of Congress from free states. It led to the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the Civil War and the election of Republican Ulysses S. Grant in 1868.

“It did not lead to an effort by Republicans to pack the court.”

The final example offered was the court case challenging the Affordable Care Act.

“Ohio joined with 25 other states in asking the Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare, stating that ‘requiring citizen-to-citizen subsidy or redistribution is contrary to the foundational assumptions of the constitutional compact,’” the lawmaker said. “The court ruled in favor of Obamacare. Republican presidential candidates in 2016 did not threaten the court’s independence.”

Click credited the wisdom of the nation’s founding fathers for creating three separate branches of government.

“They are both interdependent and independent from each other. The Supreme Court was designed to be the least political branch of government and its sole purpose is to interpret the law in the light of the supreme law of the land, The United States Constitution,” he continued. “This is a huge task. Regardless of how educated and dedicated our justices are, in the end, they are only human … (requiring) a huge amount of self-discipline to render a judgement based on the law that may reflect what the law says and yet opposes one’s personal beliefs.”

He concluded that it is not the role of a justice to change the law, but to discern and maintain the law as written and according to the intent of its authors.