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WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court made a hard turn to the right in the final days of a blockbuster term that came to a close this week, striking down affirmative action and President Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan in a series of 6-3 decisions that gave conservatives reason to cheer but drew angry recriminations from the left.
Those decisions will leave the high court firmly positioned as a political lightning rod in Washington despite surprising rulings on voting rights, immigration and Native American children in which conservative and liberal justices were able to find common ground. Overall, the Supreme Court handed down more unanimous opinions this term than in recent years and far fewer opinions that were split along purely ideological lines.
The high court has often sought to steer back to center after particularly divisive decisions, and none were as contentious in recent years as last June’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. Public approval of the court plummeted, protests cropped up across the nation and leaders of both political parties continue to grapple with the fallout. The problems were compounded by ethics scandals that were still unfolding as the last opinions were being drafted.
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“Last term was a real outlier in its severely partisan character,” said David Cole, national legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union who has repeatedly argued matters before the justices. “One could read the results of this term as the court attempting to rehabilitate its image as a fair arbiter of disputes.”
Cole stressed that the court’s final opinions, in his view, were a big caveat to that analysis.
Voting, immigration: Where the Supreme Court compromised
Biden lost at the Supreme Court on student loans, but the administration had other high-profile and unexpected wins at a court where conservatives hold a 6-3 super majority. On the emergency docket, the administration successfully defended an expansion of access to the abortion pill mifepristone. On the regular docket, the court handed Biden a rare win on immigration, tossing a suit from Republican state officials on technical grounds.
Those and other outcomes reflected a term that − until its final week − frequently had Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush nominee, aligning with the court’s three liberals and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Donald Trump pick.
“This isn’t the case of a monolithic court,” said Josh Blackman, a law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston and close observer of the high court.
“Even with the 6-3 court, this term, Justice Sotomayor and Justice Thomas were in dissent roughly an equal number of times,” Blackman said of the court’s most senior liberal and its most senior conservative associate justice.
The lineup was perhaps most pronounced in the court’s voting cases. Last week, a 6-3 majority brushed aside an argument raised by state Republicans that state legislatures have virtually unchecked power to set election rules. Earlier this month, in a decision that may help Democrats in the 2024 congressional elections, a 5-4 majority ruled that state lawmakers can’t turn a blind eye to the racial makeup of their congressional districts.
Affirmative action, student loans : Where the Supreme Court dug in
As it usually does, the Supreme Court saved its most controversial opinions − the cases most likely to split the court along ideological lines − for the final days of June. This year, that meant decisions to wipe out affirmative action, strike down Biden’s $400 billion student debt relief plan and to rule that business owners have a First Amendment right to deny wedding services to same sex-couples.
All three of those decisions were handed down on 6-3 votes. All three involved conservative justices lined up against the liberal wing. And all three drew howls from congressional Democrats and praise from Republicans, thrusting the high-profile legal disputes into a world of politics that Roberts has studiously attempted to avoid.
“This MAGA-captured Supreme Court feels free to accept lavish gifts and vacations from their powerful, big-monied friends, all while they refuse to help everyday Americans,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. said. “The American people know that the Biden administration’s student loan socialism plan would be a raw deal for hardworking taxpayers,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., posted on Twitter after that ruling.
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But unlike the abortion opinion last year, the affirmative action and student loan cases never brought huge protests to the court’s steps. Many colleges won’t be affected by the affirmative action decision because they accept so many potential candidates already − and many others, including those in California and Michigan − are already banned from considering race. And some LGBTQ advocates questioned how many businesses would be affected by a decision that appeared to be limited to those selling products that represent speech, such as artwork.
Unresolved: A simmering debate over ethics
One issue left unresolved that cast a shadow over much of the term: Revelations of questionable ethics.
Most of those stories, reported by ProPublica and based on documents and extensive interviews, focused on Justice Clarence Thomas, who accepted private jet travel and luxury vacations from a Republican donor that were never disclosed. Justice Samuel Alito, more recently, acknowledged he flew to Alaska for a fishing trip on a private jet in 2008 that belonged to a hedge fund manager who repeatedly brought cases before the high court. Alito, who preempted a ProPublica with an usual op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, said he wasn’t aware of the cases and wasn’t required to disclose the travel.
Fallout from those and other scandals prompted calls in Congress for the Supreme Court to adopt a code of ethics, but the issue has increasingly become partisan, with Democratic lawmakers threatening to advance legislation in the Senate and Republicans claiming that critics are overstating the problem in an effort to delegitimatize the court.
Roberts seemed to recognize the potential damage to the court’s reputation, telling an audience late last month that he and his colleagues were “continuing to look at things we can do” to underscore a commitment to the “highest standards of conduct.” But it’s not clear what, if any, steps had been taken as the justices handed down their final opinions Friday and prepared to leave court for the annual summer recess.
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