1978: NOAA announces gender-neutral hurricane naming system
Federal News Network presents a daily update of important moments in the history of the U.S. government.
On Feb. 5, 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt announced a controversial plan to expand the U.S. Supreme Court to as many as 15 judges, allegedly to make it more efficient. Critics accused him of trying to “pack” the court and thus neutralize Supreme Court justices hostile to his New Deal program. Before then, the court had struck down several key pieces of New Deal legislation as delegating an unconstitutional amount of authority to the executive branch and the federal government. But after a landslide re-election in 1936, Roosevelt issued a proposal to provide retirement at full pay for all members of the court over 70 years old. If a justice refused to retire, an “assistant” with full voting rights was to be appointed, thus ensuring Roosevelt a liberal majority. Most Republicans and many Democrats in Congress opposed the so-called “court-packing” plan. Before the bill came to a vote in Congress, two justices helped a majority of the court to uphold the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act, saying the national economy had grown to such a degree that federal regulation and control was warranted. The “court-packing” plan was considered unnecessary, and in July the Senate struck it down by a vote of 70 to 22.
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