The winners (and losers) from major Supreme Court decisions

The Herald Scotland

12 hours ago

But advocates for migrants, LGBTQ+ rights activists and others were left shaking their heads and vowing to find other ways to keep fighting on issues that went against them.
And an appeals court that is proving to be more conservative than the Supreme Court racked up more losses.
Here is a list of winners and losers from the court's term that began in October.
Winners
President Trump
The president called a surprise news conference soon after the Supreme Court issued its final rulings of the term to praise the justices' work, including an opinion "that we're very happy about."
"The Constitution has been brought back," Trump said about the conservative majority's decision limiting the ability of judges to block his policies from taking effect while they're being litigated. The opinion, which left uncertain which babies born in the United States will automitially become citizens, set off shockwaves among migrant communities.
Even before that decision, the Supreme Court had helped Trump by lifting through emergency orders many of the pauses lower courts had put on Trump's efforts to slash and restructure the federal government and to rapidly deport migrants.
The Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett trio
There's no doubt about who was in control of a court that continues to move the law in a conservative direction though not as much as some justices want.
Chief Justice John Roberts was in the majority on nearly every decision, followed closely by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
On the decisions that divided the court, they sometimes sided with the three other conservatives including when they ruled that lower courts likely went too far when they blocked Trump's changes to birthright citizenship.
The six conservatives were also united against the three liberals when they backed bans on gender affirming care for minors, age verification requirements for pornographic websites, states' efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, and parents' desire to remove their child from class when books with LGBTQ+ characters are being read.
But at times Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett joined with the court's liberals - and against Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch. Those decisions included rejections of conservative challenges to Obamacare and to a federal subsidy program for internet and phone services for poor and rural communities that is funded by user fees.
Don't like the Supreme Court's rulings? Chief Justice John Roberts has thoughts
Religious groups
Religious groups continued their recent winning streak at the high court though with an exception. On the biggest of the three cases brought by religious groups - the Oklahoma Catholic Church's bid to create the nation's first religious charter school - the court deadlocked 4-4. But that's because Barrett recused herself from the case, and the issue is expected to come back to the court with different participants that don't have ties to Barrett.
The court has already teed up another religion-based case for the fall, whether prison officials can be sued for violating the religious rights of a Rastafarian inmate whose dreadlocks were forcibly shaved by Louisiana prison guards.
TikTok
The court in January unanimously upheld a law intended to effectively ban TikTok in the United States. So why is TikTok and its tens of millions of users a winner? Because Trump has repeatedly declined to enforce the law, saying he's working on an alternate solution to the national security concerns.
More: Trump wins again. Conservatives like Amy Coney Barrett again. Supreme Court takeaways
Losers
5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
The appeals court that is arguably the most conservative in the country did not fare well again. The justices agreed to hear more appeals from the Louisiana-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals than from any other circuit and reversed more of its decisions, according to data compiled by SCOTUSblog.
The times they did so included in rulings upholding the Biden administration's regulation of untraceable "ghost guns, the Food and Drug Administration's rejection of fruit- and candy-flavored vaping products, and Obamacare's requirement that insurers have to cover cancer screenings and other preventive care services recommended by a task force.
Environmental regulations
The court continued a years-long trend of narrowing federal protections for the environment, including taking away a tool the Environmental Protection Agency used to control water pollution.
The court also let federal agencies scale back their environmental reviews of projects in a case involving construction of a railway in Utah.
And the court said fuel producers can challenge California's standards for vehicle emissions and electric cars under a federal air pollution law.
LGBTQ+ rights
Five years after ruling that transgender people, as well as gay and lesbian people, are protected by a landmark civil rights law barring sex discrimination in the workplace, the court upheld Tennessee's ban on gender affirming care for minors,
The ideologically divided court said the ban does not discriminate against transgender people because the restrictions turn on age and the purpose of the medical treatment, not whether the patient is transgender.
In a different case, the court said parents with religious objections to books with LGBTQ+ characters must be allowed to remove their children from class when those books are being used.
And in an emergency order, the court allowed Trump to enforce his ban on transgender people serving in the military while that policy is being challenged.
Days after adjourning for the summer, the court announced it's taking up next term states' bans on transgender athletes joining female sports teams.
Mixed results
Gun regulations
While the court said "ghost guns" can be subject to background checks and other requirements, it rejected Mexico's attempt to hold U.S. gunmakers liable for violence caused by Mexican drug cartels armed with their weapons.
But gun violence prevention groups were relieved that, in siding with the gunmakers, the court didn't give the gun industry the broad immunity it sought. The groups are hopeful they can continue to hold gun makers accountable if they break the law.
Parental rights
While the court ruled against the Tennessee parents who want to get gender affirming care for their children, the justices backed parental rights in the case about LGBTQ+ storybooks.
And the court's decision upholding Texas' age verification law for pornographic websites may have been foreshadowed during oral arguments when Barrett said she knows from her experience as a parent of seven children how difficult it is to keep up with the content blocking devices that those challenging Texas' law offered as a better alternative.
Disability rights
The court sided with a Minnesota teen 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. That decision will make it easier for families to use the ADA to sue schools for damages over the lack of an accommodation for a learning disability.
But the court sided against a retired firefighter who argued the ADA protects retirees as well as those able to work. The justices said the firefighter, who left the force due to Parkinson's disease, could not sue her former employer for reducing health care benefits for disabled retirees.