9 Cases We’re Watching as June Kicks Off
9 Cases We’re Watching as June Kicks Off
The insurrection flags at Samuel Alito's house and the court's upcoming decisions are all part of the same frightening story.
With a new report coming out each week about a different MAGA flag flown at one of Samuel Alito’s houses, it can be easy to forget that we are heading into the thick of Supreme Court decision season. But June has just begun, and already the right-wing supermajority has begun its assault on our rights — dragging the nation backward by greenlighting racial gerrymandering and restricting the right to due process for Americans whose property the state has seized.
As further details about the right-wing justices’ corruption come to light, it is essential to remember that these shocking examples of judicial misconduct are part of the same story as the dangerous decisions the Supreme Court will undoubtedly make: This is a court working to amass unchecked power for itself and its political allies while eschewing all accountability.
To help ensure that no rulings fall through the cracks of a soon-to-be very crowded media landscape, we put together this list of nine major cases with potentially disastrous consequences to which we’re paying extra close attention:
FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine: The court has an opportunity to reverse the Food and Drug Administration’s twenty-year-old approval of mifepristone, a safe and effective medication used in gold-standard medication abortion protocol, potentially restricting and cutting off access to abortion for countless people across the country.
Moyle v. U.S./Idaho v. U.S.: In these consolidated cases, the court has an opportunity to bar medical professionals from providing pregnant people who are experiencing dangerous health-threatening situations with emergency abortion care.
City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson: The court has an opportunity to allow cities/municipalities to punish unhoused people for sleeping outside when shelters are full — giving them the power to clear out camps and harm some of the most targeted and vulnerable people in our communities.
Garland v. Cargill: The court has an opportunity to rule that bump stock devices — firearms equipped to fire at almost the rapid rate of a machine gun — cannot be limited under longstanding U.S. law barring machine guns.
Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo/Relentless v. Department of Commerce: The court has an opportunity to limit or entirely overturn the Chevron doctrine, which requires courts to defer to expert federal agencies when their regulations are challenged. This is the latest chance the right-wing justices have given themselves to grab more power and limit the federal government’s ability to function properly.
Moore v. U.S.: The court has an opportunity to preemptively bar lawmakers from passing certain much-needed taxes for the ultra-wealthy.
SEC v. Jarkesy: The court has an opportunity to hamstring the Securities and Exchange Commission’s ability to protect people from fraud. In doing so, it may throw the constitutionality of more than 2,000 administrative law judges into question — judges who carry a major share of the burden for adjudicating legal disputes and keeping our legal system from grinding to a halt.
Trump v. U.S.: The court has an opportunity to rule that Donald Trump is immune from prosecution for any official acts done while in office. But regardless of how the justices ultimately rule, in delaying oral arguments in the case until the very last argument day of the term, the court already handed Trump a win by ensuring the delayed trial he desired.
U.S. v. Rahimi: The court has an opportunity to strike down the federal ban on domestic abusers purchasing firearms — a far-reaching move that would endanger women, nonbinary, and trans people the most.
As we try to make sense of decisions in these cases and others, we cannot forget that the court designs its own docket. The justices overwhelmingly choose to take up cases that can only move the law further to the right — creating a system where pundits will reward the justices’ “restraint” for making “good” decisions that simply maintain the status quo, and where the bad decisions they make will rip away our fundamental rights and freedoms and undermine our democracy.
It’s a rigged game, and the more we work together to call that out, the more people will understand the urgent need for structural reforms for this broken institution.