US Supreme Court Approval Ticks Up Despite Contentious Rulings

US Supreme Court public approval rose in a new survey despite contentious decisions on affirmative action and student loan forgiveness.

A Marquette Law School Poll found that 45% of adults surveyed approve of the job the court is doing, up from 38% at this time last year after the constitutional right to abortion was overturned.

The new data comes a month after the court’s conservative majority effectively ended the use of race as a factor in college admissions and struck President Joe Biden’s $430 billion student loan forgiveness plan.

Confidence in the court as an institution also rose in the July survey of 1,005 adults with 31% of respondents saying they have a great deal or a lot of confidence in the court, which is up from 25% in a May Marquette survey.

Half of all respondents favored the court’s decision on affirmative action and 37% favored the student loan ruling. Only 35% favored the court’s decision to back a Christian website designer and rule that she has a First Amendment right not to serve same-sex people.

July’s 45% approval rating overall is a four-point increase from May’s polling, which found the court’s approval rating had slid to 41% from 47% in January.

The May poll followed reports from ProPublica detailing how Justice Clarence Thomas had accepted luxury trips, school tuition for his grandnephew, and other benefits from a Republican donor, which he never reported on his financial disclosure forms.

At that time 26% of respondents said the justices’ honesty and ethical standards were high or very high. That increased to 32% in July, but the public was divided. A third of respondents, 33%, rated the justices’ honesty and ethical standards as average and another third, 35%, rating them low or very low.

The percentage of people who think the justices’ decisions are motivated mainly by politics saw the biggest increase from 49% in January to 58% in July.

The poll, conducted from July 7-12, had a margin of error of four percentage points.

A separate survey from Pew Research Center found favorable views of the Supreme Court in line overall with the Marquette results but at historic lows for its survey work.

Some 44% of respondents had a favorable opinion of the court in the survey of more than 8,400 adults conducted between July 10-16 though it was the lowest mark in more than 30 years of Pew Center polling.

The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5% for all respondents.