Supreme Court primed to drop a deluge of important decisions

The Herald Scotland

2 days ago

Those include whether the court will allow President Donald Trump to enforce his changes to birthright citizenship while his new policy is being litigated and whether the court will uphold Tennessee's ban on gender affirming care for minors.
In addition to the court dispensing with the cases it debated in oral arguments in recent months, the justices are continuing to field an unusual number of emergency requests from the Trump administration to intervene in the many legal challenges to the president's policies.
That could push the regular work of the court into July.
Here's a look at the decisions expected in the coming weeks:
Limiting challenges to Trump's executive authority
Trump's executive order limiting birthright citizenship has been put on hold by judges across the country who ruled it's probably unconstitutional.
During the May 15 oral arguments, none of the justices voiced support for the Trump administration's theory that the president's order is consistent with the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause and past Supreme Court decisions about that provision.
But several of the justices have expressed concern about the ability of one judge to block a law or presidential order from going into effect anywhere in the country while it's being challenged.
It was unclear from the oral arguments how the court might find a way to limit nationwide - or "universal" - court orders and what that would mean for birthright citizenship and the many other Trump policies being challenged in court.
Religious expression versus separation of church and state
Of the three cases the justices heard about the First Amendment's protections for the right to practice religion, the biggest was the Catholic Church's bid to run the nation's first religious charter school. But the court deadlocked 4-4 over whether they could do that. That left in place a lower court's rejection of the school but without setting a precedent that must be followed for similar attempts in the future.
More: Supreme Court blocks Catholic charter school in big setback for religion advocates
In the other cases about the free exercise of religion, the court is likely to side with Catholic Charities in a dispute over when religious groups have to pay unemployment taxes. And the court's conservative majority sounded sympathetic to Maryland parents who raised religious objections to having their elementary school children read books with LGBTQ+ characters.
The battle over transgender rights
Transgender rights cases were already making their way to the Supreme Court from state actions and now the Trump administration policies regarding transgender people will accelerate that trend. The court has already granted the administration's emergency request that it be allowed to enforce its ban on military service by transgender people while that restriction is being challenged.
In one of the court's biggest pending decisions, the justices will decide whether states can ban minors from receiving puberty blockers and hormone therapy. During December's oral arguments, a majority seemed to agree states can do that.
But how they reach that conclusion will affect how much their decision applies to other transgender rights case including those about transgender athletes, whether health plans have to cover gender affirming care, where transgender inmates must be housed and if transgender people can serve in the military.
Implications for parental rights
While the court seems likely to rule against the parents challenging Tennessee's ban on gender affirming care for minors, they sounded poised to back the Maryland parents who want their elementary school children excused from class when books with LGBTQ+ characters are being read.
And in a case about Texas' requirement that websites verify users are 18 or over, one justice expressed her own parental frustration over trying to control what her children see on the internet. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who has seven children, said she knows from personal experience how difficult it is to keep up with the content blocking devices that those challenging Texas' law offered as a better alternative.
But while the justices were sympathetic to the purpose of Texas' law, they may decide a lower court didn't sufficiently review whether it violates the First Amendment rights of adults so must be reconsidered.
Gun cases could bring mixed results
In one of the court's biggest decisions so far this year, a 7-2 majority upheld the Biden administration's regulation of untraceable "ghost guns," ruling that the weapons can be subject to background checks and other requirements.
But the court is expected to reject Mexico's attempt to hold U.S. gunmakers liable for violence caused by Mexican drug cartels armed with their weapons. A majority of the justices sounded likely to agree with the gunmakers that the chain of events between the manufacture of a gun and the harm it causes is too lengthy to blame the industry.
Neither case is directly about the Second Amendment's right to bear arms. And the court narrowly decided against taking up two cases about that right - Maryland's ban on assault-style weapons and Rhode Island's ban on high-capacity magazines.
More: Supreme Court won't review bans on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines
Planned Parenthood, but not abortion directly, is an issue
Unlike last year when the court considered two cases about abortion access, that hot button issue is not directly before the court. But the justices are deciding whether to back South Carolina's effort to deprive Planned Parenthood of public funding for other health services because it also provides abortions.
The issue is whether the law allows Medicaid patients to sue South Carolina for excluding Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program.
If the court says the patients can't sue, other GOP-led states are expected to also kick Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid. And anti-abortion advocates are pushing for the same action nationwide.
Conservative challenges to Obamacare and internet subsidies
The court is considering conservative challenges to Obamacare and to an $8 billion federal program that subsidizes high-speed internet and phone service for millions of Americans.
The justices seemed likely to reject an argument that the telecommunications program is funded by an unconstitutional tax, a case that raised questions about how much Congress can "delegate" its legislative authority to a federal agency.
The latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act takes aim at 2010 law's popular requirement that insurers cover without extra costs preventive care such as cancer screenings, cholesterol-lowering medication and diabetes tests.
Two Christian-owned businesses and some people in Texas argue that the volunteer group of experts that recommends the services health insurance must cover is so powerful that, under the Constitution, its members must be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Multiple discrimination challenges
The court is deciding a number of cases about alleged discrimination in the workplace, at school and in drawing congressional boundaries.
The justices appeared likely to rule that a worker faced a higher hurdle to sue her employer as a straight woman than if she'd been gay, a decision that would make it easier to file "reverse discrimination" lawsuits.
The court may also side with a Minnesota teenager trying to use the Americans with Disabilities Act to sue her school for not accommodating her rare form of epilepsy that makes it difficult to attend class before noon.
It's less clear whether the court will agree with non-Black voters in Louisiana that the state's congressional map, which includes two majority-Black districts, discriminates against them.
Decisions in all the cases are expected by the end of June or early July.