Americans' opinions about Supreme Court hit record low: Gallup poll

Emily R. Condon, USA TODAYThu, July 30, 2026 at 12:49 AM UTC

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Just one in three Americans approve of how Supreme Court justices are doing their job, according to a new Gallup poll that shows Republicans are particularly dissatisfied with the court.

The July 2026 poll revealed that 33% of Americans approve of the high court, a record low for the 26-year poll. Previously, the lowest bar was at 39% from Gallup data collected in July 2025.

Low ratings from Democrats and independents likely reflect their unhappiness with the ideological tilt of the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, Jeffrey M. Jones wrote for Gallup. But Republicans may be disappointed that the conservative court hasn’t gone far enough – and, in fact, thwarted key Trump administration policy goals, Jones said.

Only 58% of Republicans approved of the court's performance in July 2026 compared with 79% in September 2025 and 75% in July 2025. Democrats' approval rating of the court remained in similarly low range in that time period, only spanning 11% to 14%. The total approval rating during those three time periods was 39% in July 2025, 42% in September 2025 and 33% – the record low, in July 2026.

The sudden 21-point drop in Republican approval for rulings by the majority conservative court, however, stands out, experts said.

Supreme Court recently handed notable losses to Trump

The latest survey was taken July 1-19, just days after the justices dropped some of their biggest decisions before recessing for the summer. The tanking approval might reflect GOP respondents' disappointment with the outcome of a slew of cases brought by President Donald Trump's administration, according to Josh Blackman, a law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston.

The major rulings included a rejection of President Donald Trump’s limits on birthright citizenship and his attempt to fire Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook. The court also ruled against a Republican effort to stop states from counting mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received later.

In February, the court struck down the sweeping tariffs that were a centerpiece of Trump’s economic agenda.

Blackman said that Republicans might not understand why the conservative-majority court isn't delivering on GOP priorities and the president's promises.

"They don't quite understand why the cases that they care perhaps the most about – tariffs, birthright citizenship, voter mail-in ballots – they keep losing," Blackman told USA TODAY. "They look at the sort of Democratic appointees to the court, and they never break rank. But the Republican appointees do."

Chief Justice John Roberts has said that the justices are not "political actors," according to a May event reported by NBC News. He added that the court has to make "unpopular" decisions that are "based on our best effort to figure out what the Constitution means and how it applies."

Trump scored a few SCOTUS victories nevertheless

Trump did have some notable legal wins in the court's term, though. The court delivered on a long-term goal of the conservative legal movement, overturning a 90-year precedent that had limited the ability of presidents to fire leaders of agencies that Congress designed to be independent.

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And Democrats denounced a 6-3 decision gutting a key section of the Voting Rights Act and another that ditched one of the few remaining checks on money in politics.

Trump also racked up numerous wins on emergency appeals the administration filed, asking the court to let it proceed with a policy while it is being fully litigated.

Critics have complained that the court is issuing too many consequential decisions through those emergency requests, often called the “shadow docket” because those appeals don’t receive the full briefings and lengthy opinions of the cases debated through oral arguments.

Many of the emergency appeals have tested Trump’s expansive view of presidential power which far outstrips what previous Republican presidents have tried and which counters “the Constitutional design that we're all familiar with," Gabe Roth, the executive director of a nonpartisan transparency organization Fix the Court, told USA TODAY.

When the court lets one of Trump’s controversial policies proceed, even on a temporary basis, Roth said, that “sits in a bad place with a lot of people."

That’s especially true if the justices don’t explain their reasoning, “when in comparison, the districts courts and the circuit courts below them are often giving these 50, 80, 100 page opinions as to why a Trump administration policy is unconstitutional,” he said.

The Trump administration has received favorable rulings through the emergency docket process, including rulings that allowed redistricting in Texas and Alabama, implementing Republican-favored maps ahead of the 2026 midterms. However, another "shadow docket" ruling prevented Trump from federalizing and deploying the National Guard to suppress crime in Illinois.

Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll which regular surveys public opinion on the court, said that when it comes to the "shadow docket" there’s a “broad perception that the court has sided with the president on more issues than it's opposed him.”

Approval ratings measured by Franklin’s polling in the past year have "consistently been in the low to the mid 40s," though not as low as in Gallup’s surveys.

Franklin hasn’t crunched the numbers yet for the law school’s July survey so doesn’t know if he will find a recent decline. That data will be released on Thursday, Aug. 6.

"That's a big drop in Gallup's data, and it's certainly eye-catching,” he said. “It will be very interesting if it holds up in other polling on the court.”

Contributing: Maureen Groppe

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Americans' opinions about Supreme Court hit record low: Gallup poll

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