The Supreme Court wrapped up its term Friday, releasing decisions in five cases.
Trump v. CASA, Inc.
In one of the most watched decisions of the term, the bench limited the scope of nationwide injunctions by lower courts in a case involving President Donald Trump's executive order to eliminate birthright citizenship.
The court did not rule on the constitutionality of President Trump's executive order. But the ruling effectively allows President Trump to begin enforcing his executive order, pending legal challenges at the lower court level. The court ruled by a 6-3 majority, with the court's three liberal judges in the minority.
The case could have implications far beyond the birthright citizenship case.
The ruling “not only has effect on birthright citizenship, it has effect basically on any policy of the executive branch that people think is unconstitutional,” said Seth Chandler, a law professor at the University of Houston.
Mahmoud v. Taylor
In a case involving religious rights, the justices sided with Maryland parents who sued to be able to opt their children out of lessons involving LGBTQ-inclusive storybooks.
The decision came in a closely watched case involving Montgomery County Public Schools, which introduced the books in 2022 to reflect its diverse student body, but it could have ripple effects.
"School boards are on notice that when they're introducing controversial curriculum, they need to be aware that parents have rights,” said Ilya Shapiro, the director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. “Whether that will affect evolution, or let's say Quakers object to war. Can you teach the history of war? I don't know. They’ll have to look at it case by case.”
Chandler says it could spark a “huge litigation industry” between schools and parents wanting their students to opt out of certain lessons.
Free Speech Coalition, Inc. V. Paxton
In a case focused on free speech rights, the court upheld a Texas law requiring age verification for access to online pornography.
In a 6-3 decision, the justices ruled that the interest in protecting children online outweighed the potential burdens placed on adult websites and their users. The majority opinion emphasized that the law targets commercial distributors of explicit content and does not ban access.
“The justices essentially upheld age verification requirements onlinefor accessing any site that has morethan two-thirds of itsmaterial (as) sexual material thatwould be obscene as tominors,” said David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University and the former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
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Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, Inc.
The justices preserved a key part of the Affordable Care Act’s preventive health care coverage requirements, rejecting a challenge from Christian employers to the provision that affects some 150 million Americans.
The 6-3 ruling comes in a lawsuit over how the government decides which health care medications and services must be fully covered by private insurance under former President Barack Obama’s signature law, often referred to as Obamacare.
FCC v. Consumers’ Research
The bench upheld a fee added to phone bills to provide billions of dollars annually to help subsidize phone and internet services in rural areas.
“It's a sort of a technical case about something called the nondelegation doctrine, which most professors have thought is pretty much dead,” Chandler said. “And this one just hammered another spike into the nondelegation doctrine and says that Congress can really give pretty broad discretion to executive agencies on how to implement the desires of Congress.”
A split bench
All of the Friday rulings were decided in 6-3 votes, three along clear partisan lines based on the party of the president appointing each justice.
The pattern shows “a conservative majority has taken clear control of the court,” according to Chandler.
But others see a less stark divide.
“It's really a 3-3-3 court,” said Shapiro. You have the conservatives, typically defined as Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch. You have the liberals, the Democratic appointees, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson. And then you have three in the middle, that triumvirate, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh and Barrett, who really control the direction and the scope of most politically salient issues.”
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