The Guardian or Judicial Authority statue sits above the west plaza of the United States Supreme Court on June 7, 2024 in Washington, DC. Among the rulings the court is expected to issue by the end of June are cases on access to abortion drugs dispensed by mail, guns limiting the power of regulators and former President Donald Trump’s efforts to avoid criminal charges for trying to overturn his 2020 election loss.
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Presidential immunity, abortion, guns. The Supreme Court will issue important rulings on all of these topics and many more over the next month. With a docket which is unusually filled with controversial legal questions, the justices are far behind where they usually are at this point in their term.
Typically, by the second week of June, there are between four and six really big unsolved cases. But this year, there are more than a dozen. And while the court almost always completes its work by the end of June, this year even some justices are privately predicting that they won’t finish their work until July.
Maybe The most notable unresolved case is the trial of former President Trump’s immunity claim from criminal charges for his efforts to overturn Biden’s election victory in 2020. It is the most significant test of presidential power since the Supreme Court’s 1974 decision ordering the President to Nixon turned over to the Watergate special prosecutor – and eventually indicted – his tape recordings of the White House Conversations.
Trump was also involved in the incident separate case related to the Jan. 6 riots at the United States Capitol, this meeting concerns a federal law that makes it a crime to obstruct an official proceeding. This was the most serious offense for many of the rioters, and Trump was also charged under the statute.
Besides those cases, there are other major controversies: two involving abortion, two involving gun regulation, and a series of regulatory lawsuits in which business interests are challenging the Court. Supreme limits the regulatory power of the federal government.
Abortion and gun cases in court
The most famous abortion case examines FDA regulations on prescribing and dispensing abortion pills. Since the court annulled it Roe v. Wade two years ago, more than half of women who had abortions in this country used the pill, and anti-abortion groups are trying to limit the pill’s availability. Abortion opponents have challenged not only the FDA’s 2000 approval of mifepristone but also FDA decisions aimed at making drugs more accessible, for example, allowing prescription drugs to be filled at pharmacies instead of doctors’ offices.
The remaining abortion case involves a federal law intended to ensure that hospitals do not turn away patients who need emergency care. Specifically, the issue is whether the law requires it Abortion in case of emergency when necessary to save not only the mother’s life but also her health.
The gun cases before the courts involve challenging two very different federal laws. It is considered a felony for anyone to suffer one domestic violence court order own or possess a gun. The second was the federal ban, initiated by then-President Trump, about so-called bullish stocks – device that can convert legal semi-automatic guns into illegal machine guns that can fire up to 800 rounds in a minute.
‘Chevron respect’ – and social media platforms are also on the list
Less notable, but perhaps more far-reaching than any of them, is a series of cases brought by business and conservative groups aimed at dismantling the power of what they called “administrative state”. The current Supreme Court, with a conservative majority that includes three Trump appointees, has been very receptive to many such challenges.
The biggest consequence is trying to overthrow the so-called “Chevron respect”. That doctrine, adopted by the court 40 years ago, says that if the meaning of a statute is unclear, courts should defer to the interpretation of the law by regulatory agencies — the idea being that specialized agencies subjects to fill the gaps to carry out the broad mandate of the National Assembly. If the court abandons that doctrine, and there is every indication that it will, the consequences will almost certainly be profound, limiting the ability of federal agencies to issue regulations. regulations on air and water pollution, food safety and health, in fact just about anything.
Social media platforms are also part of the plan. The two cases involved laws enacted in Texas and Florida that sought to limit the choices companies could make about what to put on their platforms. The companies claim they are like newspapers or television networks and that they have First Amendment rights to decide what content to publish and not publish. States object to the companies being more like utilities and subject to regulation.
On a completely different topic, there is a case that pits the right of city government to clear homeless encampments against the right of people to sleep outside if shelter is not available.
And there is a constitutional challenge to one issue a tax code. That may sound boring, but former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan warned that if the court invalidated the provision, it could unravel a third of the tax code.
With all of this still pending, the court has decided nearly half of the cases argued, but only two are on anyone’s list of big cases. In one, the court ruled that states could not ban it candidate Donald Trump from the voteand on the other hand the court maintain the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding mechanism. Trump’s voting lawsuit was filed quickly in less than a month, but the CFPB lawsuit is the second controversy of the term, dated October 3, and was not decided until mid-May. Making matters even more confusing, the decision, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, was delivered by a 7 to 2 vote.
So what took so long?
Why the court was so supportive remains unclear. Among the theories are that even the court’s conservatives are having trouble reaching consensus, or that some justices are delaying issuing dissenting opinions, or some security measures put in place after the unprecedented leak of Dobbs’ abortion decision are slowing the process down. Or maybe it’s just the number of really important cases the court is considering this term.
So what can you expect in the coming weeks? If you look at the numbers on which justices wrote the most opinions and which justices wrote the fewest opinions, you’ll see that the two more senior justices of the progressive party — Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — have written the most, which means they probably haven’t. more majority opinions to write, just dissent. At the same time, however, the court’s conservatives, especially Chief Justice Roberts, wrote the least, meaning they may have more majority opinions prepared to overturn.
None of this is good news for the court’s liberals. In fact, in a moment of unusual candor, Justice Sotomayor recently told a Harvard audience: “There are days when I go to my office after the announcement of a case, and close the door. come back and cry.” And she added, “There will likely be more” of those days.
