was widely understood as an effort to "pack" the court with justices who would support Roosevelt's New Deal. The plan, usually called the "court-packing plan", failed in Congress after members of Roosevelt's own Democratic Party believed it to be unconstitutional. It was defeated 70–20 in the Senate, and the Senate Judiciary Committee reported that it was "essential to the continuance of our constitutional democracy" that the proposal "be so emphatically rejected that its parallel will never again be presented to the free representatives of the free people of America.” The rise and solidification of a conservative majority on the court during the presidency of Donald Trump sparked a liberal response in the form of calls for court-packing. Democrats in the House of Representatives introduced a bill in April 2021 to expand the Supreme Court from nine to 13 seats, but Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi refused to bring it to the floor and relatively few Democrats backed it. Shortly after taking office in January 2021, Joe Biden established a presidential commission to study possible reforms to the Supreme Court. The commission's December 2021 final report discusses but takes no position on expanding the size of the court. Whether it would be constitutional to expand the size of the Supreme Court in ways understood to be designed to "pack" it with justices that would rule more favorably on a president's agenda or to simply change the ideological composition of the court remains unclear. Membership Current justices There are currently nine justices on the Supreme Court: Chief Justice John Roberts and eight associate justices. Among the current members of the court, Clarence Thomas is the longest-serving justice, with a tenure of days () as of ; the most recent justice to join the court is Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose tenure began on June 30, 2022. This graphical timeline depicts the length of each current Supreme Court justice's tenure (not seniority, as the chief justice has seniority over all associate justices regardless of tenure) on the court: Court demographics The court currently has five male and four female justices. Among the nine justices, there are two African American justices (Justices Thomas and Jackson) and one Hispanic justice (Justice Sotomayor). One of the justices was born to at least one immigrant parent: Justice Alito's father was born in Italy. At least six justices are Roman Catholics, one is Jewish, and one is Protestant.