The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to make a series of politically sensitive decisions as it ends its term, tackling tumultuous issues including whether Donald Trump can be prosecuted for his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection, access to abortion for millions of women and the basic functioning of the federal government.
As the court enters its traditional climax in June, observers are bracing for another potentially seismic four weeks that could radically reshape American public life. Matters before the court include a possible relaxation of gun laws in a country with already exceptionally lax controls, and new guardrails on how social media platforms handle misinformation.
This will be the third full year under the new supermajority of six to three right-wing justices created by Donald Trump’s three appointments. The way the court rules on the biggest cases will help cement the court’s increasingly partisan and extremist reputation, against the backdrop of mounting ethics scandals that question the justices’ ability to judge impartially.
At the top of the list of pending decisions are two cases involving Trump’s federal prosecution. They are involving the Supreme Court in presidential elections to a greater extent than at any time since Bush v. Gore in 2000, when the White House was handed to George W. Bush.
The justices have already allowed Trump to remain on the ballot by overturning a Colorado ruling that barred him from holding public office as an insurrectionist under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Now the court in the case of Trump v. U.S. must decide whether he can claim absolute presidential immunity from prosecution related to the federal case accusing him of conspiring to undermine the 2020 election.
Fischer v. US questions whether rioters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 can be charged under an obstruction statute. Should the justices rule against the use of that provision, as they indicated in oral arguments, two of the four criminal charges Trump faced in the Jan. 6 prosecution would be dropped.
“This court has been called by some an imperial court that is willing to be bold in the way it reviews precedent,” said Olatunde Johnson, a law professor at Columbia University in New York. “If the court issues a sweeping ruling on a former president’s immunity, it will raise questions about partisanship and ideology, and will certainly impact the election.”
The court’s actions have been complicated by recent revelations from the New York Times that an upside-down flag, seen as a symbol of Trump’s “stop the steal” conspiracy to reverse his 2020 defeat, was raised at the home of the right-wing Justice Samuel Alito in Virginia. the time of the Capitol riot. A second flag, also linked to the riot, was later raised at Alito and his wife’s beach house in New Jersey.
“It raises the question of whether Alito should have recused himself from these cases, and still recused himself from the final decisions,” Johnson said. On Wednesday, Alito wrote a letter to Democratic leaders in Congress refusing to recuse himself.
A less “imperial” court might think that being thrown into the middle of the presidential election was enough judicial conflict to last a year. Not this court.
The justices will also advise on the first abortion cases to reach them since they overturned the constitutional right to terminate in the Dobbs case and struck down Roe v Wade two years ago. They are considering a challenge over access to mifepristone, an abortion pill now used in more than 60% of U.S. abortions.
Should the court side with the anti-abortion groups filing the claim, approximately 57 million women of childbearing age living in states that allow abortion could be affected. Restrictions would also be further tightened for millions more women in states that already ban abortions.
A second case, Idaho v. U.S., examines the clash between that state’s strict abortion ban and the federal law known as Emtala (Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act), which requires hospitals that receive federal funding to provide patients with emergency medical treatment. care, including abortions. . The stakes here are also immense, as seen in Idaho, where the Supreme Court has allowed the ban to remain in place while it deliberates.
“There are horror stories of pregnant patients suffering terrible medical consequences, such as unnecessary hysterectomies because they couldn’t get emergency medical care under the state’s abortion ban,” said Maya Manian, a law professor and reproductive rights authority at American University Washington College. of the law.
For Manian, the confluence of the two abortion cases underscores two crucial truths: that the anti-abortion movement will not stop until it achieves a nationwide total abortion ban, and that the Supreme Court, by tearing apart the right to abortion, has created a legal mess that will probably haunt you for years to come.
The court also intervened in an area of settled law that has ensured the smooth and effective operation of federal agencies for four decades. Since 1984, the courts have adhered to the so-called Chevron doctrine, a principle introduced by the Supreme Court itself that says judges must rely on the expertise of federal regulators when reasonably interpreting ambiguous laws.
Such deference has been critical to how the federal government operates in core areas of public life, such as combating the climate crisis or protecting labor rights.
Right-wing judges indicated in oral arguments that they will sideline Chevron, thereby limiting the regulatory powers of the administrative state. “It would be the final nail in the coffin and weaken the ability of federal agencies to regulate key areas,” Johnson said.
In any normal year, in any normal Supreme Court, the other cases pending in June would be in the headlines. As it is, they seem overshadowed.
Take the two cases involving gun laws. It is a testament to the extent to which the right-wing supermajority has already abolished minimal gun controls in America that the US against Rahimi is even being heard.
This concerns a challenge to an existing ban on the possession of firearms by persons subject to a restraining order for domestic violence. The person bringing the case is a drug dealer who received such an order after abusing his girlfriend in a parking lot and then shooting a bystander.
The judges have indicated that they intend to keep the ban on domestic violence in force. But they were divided over the second gun case, which questions whether the Trump administration acted lawfully by banning so-called bump stocks — gadgets that allow semiautomatic rifles to fire almost as quickly as machine guns, at a rate of hundreds of rounds per gun . minute.
The ban was introduced after the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, when a man opened fire at a country music festival, killing 60 people.
Social media also plays a role as the court’s term ends. No fewer than five cases came before the justices in three separate hearings, all within the same general territory of the clash between the First Amendment right to free speech and the responsibility of social media companies and government officials in policing disinformation.
One of the cases has already been ruled, with the court ruling that government officials can be charged for blocking their critics on social media, but only if the criticism relates to their official duties and not their personal lives.
There are two other major areas yet to be decided that could have a profound impact on the way social media companies operate. The justices are grappling with whether states should be able to ban the editorial decisions of these companies when they moderate content or remove users from their sites.
The case arose after Republican lawmakers in Florida and Texas imposed restrictions on social media companies on how they moderated content after Trump was booted from Facebook in response to his actions regarding the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The court is also considering a move by Republican states, led by Louisiana and Missouri, to prevent the Biden administration from pressuring social media companies to remove misleading information from their platforms on topics such as Covid and the 2020 election.
Rulings in these cases will likely set parameters for how social media approaches the vexed question of where free speech ends and dangerous disinformation begins for the foreseeable future.
