Big Supreme Court Term Now Historic With Trump, Abortion Cases

The US Supreme Court has perhaps never had a term as momentous as the one it’s in the middle of now with the addition of a case that will determine if former President Donald Trump can be kept off the 2024 presidential ballot in Colorado.

In orders Friday, the court added the blockbuster case involving Trump as well as a second fight over abortion access to a docket stacked with high profile cases seeking to undercut the power of federal regulators and expand gun rights.

“I am actually stunned by the gravity and the emergency nature of the cases currently before the Court and on their way there,” said veteran Supreme Court advocate Lisa Blatt of Williams & Connolly. “I don’t recall another period like this in terms of one after another.”

There’s probably been terms with a similar number of important decisions, said Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas at Austin School of Law professor. But, he said, it’s hard to think of a comparable one when looking at the percentage of decisions that could shape elections and American lives.

If there’s any sort of broader lesson here, Vladeck said it is that it’s hard to judge what this court will do, since it’s “not shy” about jumping into anything and everything.

“Three months ago everyone was saying the focus of this term was on the administrative state and it’s a good reminder how quickly things can change,” he said. “By the time the term is over that’s going to be a footnote.”

Administrative State

In a pair of cases scheduled for arguments later this month, the justices will consider whether to overturn a bedrock administrative law doctrine that gives federal agencies broad leeway to interpret ambiguous laws.

In both Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the court has been asked to overturn its 1984 Chevron ruling that’s taken on outsized importance, affecting agency actions on everything from environmental regulations and Social Security to health-care decisions.

That’s on top of another appeal attacking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) financial structure.

The Trump and abortion cases are easier to translate to a lay audience than challenges to the administrative state and “just makes the fraught-ness of the term even more pronounced,” said Melissa Murray, a New York University School of Law professor and co-host of “Strict Scrutiny,” a podcast on the Supreme Court.

“This is kind of like a make-or-break term along multiple dimensions like is government as we know it going to continue to be possible, and then these other sort of existential questions about access to certain forms of healthcare and whether we will actually be able to take up these questions about the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment in a democratic society,” she said.

The former president, in Trump v. Anderson, is appealing the Colorado Supreme Court ruling that said he couldn’t appear on the 2024 presidential primary ballot because he incited the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol in violation of the Constitution’s insurrection clause.

“The issues raised by the possible disqualification of a former President and leading front runner present both legal and political stakes as large as any the Court has ever faced,” said Eric Segall, a Georgia State University law professor. “A split decision either way could do enormous damage to our country.”

Trump Effect

The ballot ban isn’t the only case on the court’s docket that has implications for Trump.

The court has also agreed to consider whether federal prosecutors can charge Jan. 6 Capitol riot defendants with an Enron-era statute meant to curb corporate interference with an “official proceeding.” Though Trump is not formally a party in that case, the court’s ruling in Fischer v. United States could upend charges brought against him by Special Counsel Jack Smith for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

And in a separate case, Smith himself asked the justices to weigh in on whether a former president is immune from being criminally charged at all. The justices on Dec. 22 declined to skip over an intermediate appellate court and decide the issue immediately. But the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has fast-tracked its consideration of the case, United States v. Trump, meaning that it could return to the high court in short order. Oral arguments in the appeals court are scheduled for Tuesday.

The justices will also tackle abortion after striking down the nearly 50-year-old constitutional right to an abortion almost two years ago. The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization rocked the 2022 mid-term elections, turning out Democratic voters in waves.

This time, the court will consider whether the Food and Drug Administration’s rescinding of certain safety measures for medication abortion was unlawful. The court declined to consider a broad appeal that would strip the drugs from the shelves altogether, but its ruling in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine could sharply limit the availability nationwide of the most common form of abortion.

Also on Friday, the justices agreed to consider whether hospitals can perform abortions in emergency situations in a dispute out of Idaho. In granting the cases, Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States, the Supreme Court allowed a state law prohibiting such abortions to take full effect while the litigation plays out.

“This is going to be a term that is much bigger than the term that produced Dobbs and Bruen and Kennedy, or the term that produced the affirmative action decision,” Murray said, noting the cases in 2022 that struck down the constitutional right to abortion, set a historical test for gun laws, and expanded religious rights.

And even gun rights feature predominately in the cases this term. After hearing just three Second Amendment cases over a nearly decade and a half span, the justices already have two gun cases on deck for the term.

Argued in November, the justices appeared ready to temper its expansion of gun rights by saying the federal government can ban individuals subject to domestic violence restraining orders. Still, the ruling in United States v. Rahimi is likely to set the stage for a future battle over whether the federal government can do the same for those convicted of non-violent felonies.

And on Feb. 28, the court will consider the Trump administration’s so-called bump stock ban, which was passed after the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting that killed 61 people and injured hundreds more.

The court this term is also considering a handful of other matters that in other terms would be headliners. Those include disputes over the regulation and use of social media, a $6 billion opioid settlement that the federal government is trying to scuttle, and a dispute over a 2017 corporate tax overhaul law.

Supreme Court veteran Roman Martinez of Latham & Watkins said “Chief Justice Roberts will have his hands full managing a sweeping docket with controversial cases spanning every major area of law.”