--- title: Neil Gorsuch Confirmation: The Facts Behind 60 Vote Claim description: Senate Democrats claim Supreme Court nominees have always required 60 votes for confirmation. That's not entirely true. canonical: https://time.com/4713796/neil-gorsuch-confirmation-democrats-filibuster/ author: Tessa Berenson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-03-27T20:07:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T04:03:05.902Z article:section: Politics og:title: Democrats Say Supreme Court Nominees Need 60 Votes. Is That True? og:description: A fight over the historical record. og:url: https://time.com/4713796/neil-gorsuch-confirmation-democrats-filibuster/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5e6c0fc422e85778/6988bf380a4a2289329cd5a7/gorsuch.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2000 og:image:height: 1125 og:image:alt: Judge Neil Gorsuch - Senate Judiciary Committee og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Democrats Say Supreme Court Nominees Need 60 Votes. Is That True? twitter:description: A fight over the historical record. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5e6c0fc422e85778/6988bf380a4a2289329cd5a7/gorsuch.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Democrats Say Supreme Court Nominees Need 60 Votes. Is That True? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/)  ## Tessa Berenson Mar 27, 2017 8:07 PM UTC  The Senate Judiciary Committee begins the confirmation hearing for the vacancy on the US Supreme Court with President Donald Trump's nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on March 20, 2017. The Senate Judiciary Committee begins the confirmation hearing for the vacancy on the US Supreme Court with President Donald Trump's nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on March 20, 2017. Melina Mara—The Washington Post/Getty Images  by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/)  ## Tessa Berenson Mar 27, 2017 8:07 PM UTC The fight over Supreme Court nominee [Neil Gorsuch](http://time.com/4708107/neil-gorsuch-confirmation-hearing-day-two/?iid=sr-link7) isn’t just over whether senators will vote for him. It’s also about how many votes he needs, exactly. Led by [Minority Leader Chuck Schumer](http://time.com/4711010/neil-gorsuch-confirmation-chuck-schumer-filibuster/), some Democrats argue that Gorsuch needs to [get 60 votes](http://time.com/4711010/neil-gorsuch-confirmation-chuck-schumer-filibuster/) to overcome a filibuster and be confirmed, which they claim is a historical standard. “To my Republican friends who think that if Judge Gorsuch fails to reach 60 votes we ought to change the rules I say: if this nominee cannot earn 60 votes, a bar met by each of President Obama’s nominees, and President Bush’s last two nominees, the answer isn’t to change the rules — it’s to change the nominee,” Schumer said last week. But Republicans counter that the filibuster was rarely used in the past and point out that two justices currently sitting on the court were confirmed with fewer than 60 votes—Justice Clarence Thomas by 52 votes in 1991 and Justice Samuel Alito by 58 votes in 2006. “The fact is, an attempted filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee is rare, and to do so in this context, with such an eminently qualified and brilliant judge is nothing short of obstructionism,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer [said](https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/846420877927342080) Monday, adding that it “undermines decades of Senate tradition.” Constitutional experts say both sides have a claim, though the Republican argument is the stronger one. Fights over cloture votes, which require 60 votes to end debate, have rarely happened for Supreme Court nominees. [The Washington ](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/02/02/senate-democrats-misleading-language-on-a-60-vote-standard-for-supremer-court-nominees/?utm%5Fterm=.49ffaf9f5eca)[_Post_](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/02/02/senate-democrats-misleading-language-on-a-60-vote-standard-for-supremer-court-nominees/?utm%5Fterm=.49ffaf9f5eca) counted just four cloture votes over Supreme Court nominations in modern times, most recently for Alito. But even though it was routine, justices still had to clear the 60-vote threshold to get their up-or-down vote. “You can describe the practice in different ways,” said University of Virginia law professor John Harrison. “They’re (each) emphasizing the part of the picture that they want to emphasize.” For now, the fight is mostly theoretical. Democrats do not yet have the votes necessary to successfully filibuster Gorsuch, although a handful of blue-state senators have joined Schumer in saying they won’t vote for cloture. There are 52 Republicans in the Senate, so it would only take eight Democrats to join them to end a filibuster. Even if Democrats succeeded in filibustering Gorsuch, using a precedent set by Democrats in 2013, Republican leaders could trigger the so-called [“nuclear option,”](http://time.com/4678691/republicans-neil-gorsuch-congress-nuclear-option/?iid=sr-link1) changing Senate rules to end the practice for Supreme Court nominees. “Historically, Supreme Court nominees were not subject to the kind of partisan attacks they are now,” Carrie Severino, head of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, tells TIME. If the Democrats mount a filibuster, she argues that going nuclear would “return the Senate to the historical practice, which is that Supreme Court nominees get up-or-down votes.” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to confirm Gorsuch before the Senate leaves on its April recess, one way or another. But anger on both sides over recent Supreme Court nomination political history has the body in a tense standoff. As Democratic Sen. Chris Coons lamented Monday [on MSNBC](http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/chris-coons-neil-gorsuch-nuclear-option-236533), “There’s Republicans still very mad at us over the 2013 change to the filibuster rule, we’re mad at them for shutting down the government, they’re mad at us for Gorsuch, and we’re not headed in a good direction.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4713796/neil-gorsuch-confirmation-democrats-filibuster/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4713796/neil-gorsuch-confirmation-democrats-filibuster/"},"headline":"Democrats Say Supreme Court Nominees Need 60 Votes. Is That True?","datePublished":"2017-03-27T20:07:27.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T04:03:05.902Z","description":"Senate Democrats claim Supreme Court nominees have always required 60 votes for confirmation. 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