SCOTUS Term Ends, Democrats & Republicans Now Focus On November And Making The Court A Central Issue
July 10, 2020
ONE FOR THE BOOKS
|Ariane de Vogue with CNN reviews the end of the Supreme Court’s term. She notes, “After a frenetic few weeks, the Supreme Court gaveled out Thursday, bringing to a close an unprecedented term that defied expectations and shifted perceptions of the court in the heat of an election year. The justices delivered some surprising wins to liberals — and infuriated conservatives who wanted and expected much more than they got. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP bemoaned his fate at times, but got a mixed bag in two cases concerning his bid to shield his financial documents. The court blocked House subpoenas in one case, but rejected Trump’s broad claims of immunity in another. Perhaps what will matter to Trump the most, however, is that it’s unlikely any subpoenas will go out prior to the November election because the cases were returned to lower courts for more proceedings.”
SORRY I AIN'T SORRY
|Lawrence Hurley with Reuters points out that the conservative Supreme Court defied PRESIDENT TRUMP at key moments this term. SCOTUS rejected the president’s sweeping claims of presidential immunity as well as his administration’s efforts to rescind DACA, box out LGBTQ workplace rights, and uphold a restrictive Louisiana abortion law.
A YEAR OF SURPRISES
|To say 2020 didn’t bring what we all expected would be a massive understatement. But it applies to expectations for the Supreme Court too. Richard Wolf with USA Today writes, “When the Supreme Court opened its 2019 term nine months ago with a debate about the meaning of insanity, few could have predicted how crazy things would get. The chief justice presiding over a president’s Senate impeachment trial. A viral pandemic forcing the first postponement of oral arguments in a century. The oldest justice questioning lawyers from her hospital bed. The quietest justice speaking up daily. Opinions being released into July for the first time since 1996. By the end of the term Thursday, the customarily conservative court had issued a series of decisions on gay and transgender rights, the DACA program, abortion rights and PRESIDENT TRUMP’S lack of immunity from criminal investigation that produced the loudest cheers from liberals. The lesson from the court seemed to be that while the president, the Democratic House and the Republican Senate are predictable, a court of nine is harder to pin down.”
DECLARING INDEPENDENCE
|Peter Baker with The New York Times reports on the Supreme Court’s decisions yesterday regarding PRESIDENT TRUMP’S financial records in which both of his appointees — JUSTICES NEIL GORSUCH and BRETT KAVANAUGH — joined their liberal colleagues to reject Trump’s claim to “absolute immunity.” Baker notes, “That a conservative court including two of his own appointees would so decisively slap down a Republican president’s expansive claim of constitutional power served as a reminder that institutional prerogatives still matter in Washington, even in a time of extreme partisanship. The court remains broadly conservative on important issues like religious freedom, but in cases on gay rights, immigration, abortion and now executive power, it has defied the president repeatedly in recent weeks.”
MAKING LEMONADE
|After a string of losses at the Supreme Court, PRESIDENT TRUMP is hoping those stunning defeats will actually drum up support for his re-election. But Josh Wingrove and Jennifer Jacobs with Bloomberg report that progressives are starting to get into gear around SCOTUS too. The rulings this week about accessing the president’s financial records help position the high court to be an important election issue come November. “The rulings set the courts up as a potential major battleground between TRUMP and JOE BIDEN, as some Democrats also move to mobilize progressive voters against Trump’s reshaping of the judiciary. And the stakes are high — the two oldest justices — RUTH BADER GINSBURG, 87, and STEPHEN BREYER, 81 — are both liberals and could potentially retire during the next administration.”
FIRED UP, READY TO GO
|Speaking of progressives looking to make SCOTUS a core election issue this fall, representatives of organizations including NARAL, MoveOn, Voto Latino and Demand Justice wrote a piece for USA Today that argues Democrats need to come together to take back control of the Supreme Court. They argue, “Without action, everything we care about is at risk. Republicans have long turned to the Supreme Court to enact their deeply unpopular agenda: repealing affordable health care, undoing commonsense gun violence prevention measures, tilting the law in favor of corporations and the wealthy, making it harder for workers to organize, undercutting the fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body and reproduction, and weakening civil rights protections. If Trump is able to appoint more Supreme Court justices, he will cement a right-wing majority that will enact a partisan, Republican agenda from the bench for decades to come.”
DON'T SLEEP ON THIS
|There was another massive decision from SCOTUS yesterday and it had nothing to do with DONALD TRUMP. The Supreme court ruled 5-4 that nearly half of the state of Oklahoma is, and always has been, a Native American reservation. This landmark ruling is potentially one of the most consequential legal victories for Native Americans in decades. Jack Healy and Adam Liptak with The New York Times report, “The case was steeped in the United States government’s long history of brutal removals and broken treaties with Indigenous tribes, and grappled with whether lands of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation had remained a reservation after Oklahoma became a state. The decision puts in doubt hundreds of state convictions of Native Americans and could change the handling of prosecutions across a vast swath of the state. Lawyers were also examining whether it had broader implications for taxing, zoning and other government functions. But many of the specific impacts will be determined by negotiations between state and federal authorities and five Native American tribes in Oklahoma.”
THE POLITICAL GENIUS OF JOHN ROBERTS
|That’s a headline from a Slate piece by Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern in which the two review the clash of the titans: DONALD TRUMP v. JOHN ROBERTS. They also note that the term-ending decisions over Trump’s financial documents were a “masterwork” of the chief justice. “Both Mazars and Vance read as resounding victories for centuries-old principles about the limits of presidential immunity and Congress’ legitimate authority to conduct executive oversight. Both were interpreted as blistering losses for Donald Trump by Donald Trump. Yet they will compel the lower courts to dither and squabble in ways that will keep the financial documents away from the public eye for months if not years. You can’t help but admire the deftness of Roberts’ ability to simultaneously split the baby, persuade both sides that they won, and score indisputable points for judicial supremacy, all while also achieving nothing immediate.”