US supreme court to decide cases with ‘monumental’ impact on democracy
Many fear the potential for extreme rightwing rulings on topics ranging from affirmative action to voting rights
Fewer than half of US adults trust the supreme court after last term saw the gutting of Roe v Wade. Photograph: Jeremy Hogan/Sopa Images/Rex/Shutterstock
On Monday, the nine justices of the US supreme court
will take their seats at the start of a new judicial year, even as the
shock waves of the panel’s previous seismic term continue to reverberate
across America.
In their first full
term that ended in June, the court’s new six-to-three hard-right
supermajority astounded the nation by tearing up decades of settled law.
They eviscerated the right to an abortion, loosened America’s already lax gun laws, erected roadblocks to combating the climate crisis, and awarded religious groups greater say in public life.
The fallout of the spate of extreme rightwing rulings has shaken public confidence in the political neutrality of the court. A Gallup poll
this week found that fewer than half of US adults trust it – a drop of
20 points in just two years and the lowest rating since Gallup began
recording the trend in 1972.
Justices have begun to respond to the pressure by sparring openly in public. The Wall Street Journal reported
that in recent speeches the liberal justice Elena Kagan has accused her
conservative peers of damaging the credibility of the court by
embracing Republican causes.
Samuel Alito, who
wrote the decision overturning the right to an abortion in Roe v Wade,
counter-accused Kagan (whom he did not name) of crossing “an important
line” by implying the court was becoming illegitimate.
To add insult to injury, Ginni Thomas, the extreme conservative activist married to Justice Clarence Thomas, was questioned on Thursday
by the House committee investigating Donald Trump’s attempt to subvert
the 2020 presidential election result, which she avidly encouraged.
With
so much discord in plain sight, you might have expected the new
supermajority created under Trump to opt for a calmer year ahead. No
chance.
The choice of cases to be decided in
the new term spells full steam ahead. “I see no signs of them slowing
down,” said Tara Groves, a law professor at the University of Texas at
Austin.
Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA
“The
supreme court has chosen to take on cases this term that raise a lot of
hot-button issues – just after they decided a bunch of cases that
raised a lot of hot-button issues.”
From
fundamental aspects of American democracy to LGBTQ+ equality, and the
electoral power of racial minorities to protecting the environment, the
conservative justices have selected a whole new slew of targets that
fall squarely within Republican priorities. The schedule for the first
two days of oral arguments this week tells the story.
On
Monday morning, the court will fling itself into the thick of
environmental controversy in the latest case threatening the ability of
the federal government to counter pollution. Having curtailed in June
the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to curb
emissions causing planet heating, the court will now hear arguments in Sackett v EPA, which has the potential to whittle down the agency’s powers to uphold clean water standards.
Cases will have ‘monumental implications for American democracy’
Tara GrovesThen on Tuesday, the court enters blockbuster territory with Merrill v Milligan.
That case could topple the last remaining pillar of the Voting Rights
Act, which has safeguarded the democratic rights of African American and
other minority citizens for the past 57 years.
As
Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice, put it in
a briefing this week, the case adds to the court’s upcoming docket “the
raw issue of race in America”.
Merrill v
Milligan concerns Alabama, where Republican lawmakers want to draw up
congressional district maps that would give Black voters the power to
send just one African American member to Congress out of a total of
seven representatives, even though Black Alabamans make up a quarter of
the state’s population. The map was blocked by three federal judges who
ruled that it was racially discriminatory and that the state had engaged
in racial gerrymandering.
In its brief to the supreme court,
Alabama effectively invites the conservative justices to make it
virtually impossible to challenge racial gerrymandering. Should the
state’s view prevail, challengers would have to show that racial
discrimination was the primary intent behind how district lines were
drawn.
“That’s a very hard standard to prove,”
said Paul Smith, senior vice-president of the Campaign Legal Center.
Should the supreme court side with Alabama, Smith added, “it would allow
legislatures to undo Black and Latino-majority districts and do away
with the opportunity of people to elect their own representatives”.
The
Alabama dispute epitomizes two visceral themes that run through several
of the blockbuster cases this term: race and democracy. The race theme
is central to one of the hottest-button cases of all – the challenge to
affirmative action in universities.
The supreme court will decide on two affirmative action cases this term. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
On
31 October, the court will hear oral arguments in two parallel cases,
both brought by Students for Fair Admissions, which describes its
mission as “restoring color-blind principles” to colleges and
universities. The first case confronts Harvard’s race-conscious
admissions policy, claiming it discriminates against Asian Americans;
the second focuses on the University of North Carolina, which is accused
of preferring Black, Hispanic and Native American applicants at the
expense of white and Asian students.
There is a
chilling echo in the concerted attack on affirmative action that is
about to play out with what happened to Roe and Casey, the landmark
abortion rulings which the supreme court overturned in June. In both
arenas - abortion and affirmative action – legal precedent stood firm
for half a century.
“It’s been the law of the
land now for 50 years that universities can take into account all
aspects of a person’s background, including their race,” Smith said.
“Schools have set up their entire systems based on reliance on that
being the law, as reaffirmed multiple times by the supreme court, though
it sure seems likely they will change course this time.”
Such
a racially charged term will collide with another seminal moment for
the highest court – the arrival on the bench of the first Black woman in
the court’s 233-year history. When Ketanji Brown Jackson takes her
place among the nine justices on Monday she will be powerless to touch
the conservatives’ unassailable dominance.
But
like any new justice, she will be able to put her stamp on the court
during a tenure which, at 52, could last for decades. It is perhaps
unlikely that Jackson will pen excoriating dissenting opinions in her first term on par with those written last term by fellow liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor, who joined the court in 2009.
But it is equally implausible that Jackson, whose parents fled the south
to escape Jim Crow segregation, will stand aside over issues as
elemental as affirmative action and racial gerrymandering. How she
handles such intense controversies as a rookie justice could reveal much
about her future presence on the bench.
Justice
Ketanji Brown Jackson will arrive during a time when the court is
handling blockbuster cases on affirmative action, democracy and race. Photograph: Fred Schilling/AP
The
second major theme of the coming term is democracy. In addition to the
Alabama racial gerrymandering case, the court has agreed to take on the
highly polarized subject of the role of state legislatures in federal
elections.
Moore v Harper could have “monumental implications for American democracy”, Groves believes. At the heart of the case is the debunked “independent state legislature theory”,
which has been embraced in recent years by radical Republicans who
argue that the constitution gives state legislatures the overriding
power to regulate federal elections.
Though legal scholars have largely rejected the doctrine,
four of the nine justices – Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and
Thomas – have paid lip-service to some aspect of it. Should they command
the majority, they could give Republican-controlled state legislatures
even more firepower to grab what is in effect minority rule through
extreme partisan gerrymandering, with very little possible oversight
from state courts.
At its most dystopian, an
extreme ruling in Moore v Harper could wreak havoc in presidential
elections in 2024 and beyond. John Eastman, the conservative law
professor mired in legal peril
over the central role he played in trying to overturn Joe Biden’s
victory on January 6, put the independent state legislature theory at
the heart of his notorious memo laying out the roadmap for an electoral coup.
Smith
explained that the supreme court could embolden state legislatures to
dictate who wins presidential elections in their state according to
political whim. “That might be unconstitutional under state law, but
under this doctrine state courts would be powerless to prevent them.”
As if race and the future of American democracy were not enough, the conservative justices are also bearing down once again
on the right to equal treatment for same-sex couples. They have taken
on a case asking whether a graphic design firm, 303 Creative LLC, should
be able to turn away gay couples requesting help creating wedding
websites on religious grounds.
The
supermajority also wants to revisit the Indian Child Welfare Act, which
for the past 44 years has been protecting Native American children from
being forcibly separated from their families and tribes and placed in
non-Native homes. The ACLU has warned that if the court overturns the act it could put “the very existence of tribes in jeopardy”.