Full Coverage: Recent Supreme Court decisions
The Supreme Court ruled on various issues this year, including President Biden’s student relief program, affirmative action in college admissions, the Voting Rights Act to redraw congressional districts and free speech rights.
This year’s decisions were delivered against the backdrop of controversy over Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s undisclosed luxury vacation with hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer in 2008 and Justice Clarence Thomas’ failure to disclose accepting gifts and vacations from developer Harlan Crow.
The court’s ethical concerns and enactment of conservative priorities — some opposed by large majorities of Americans — have been blamed for plummeting public approval of the Supreme Court. Views of the court have soured in both parties, especially among Democrats upset over last year’s decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended the nationwide guarantee of abortion rights. There has been increased attention from constitutional scholars to adopt term limits for justices appointed to the nation’s highest court.
The term ended with the conservative majority delivering high-profile rulings that blocked President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan and banned the use of race as a factor in college admissions.
Here are the cases.
The Supreme Court has ruled that President Biden does not have the authority to forgive millions of student loans.
In another major reversal, the Supreme Court forbids the use of race as an admissions factor at colleges and universities.
Supreme Court rules that conservative Christians have a free-speech right to refuse to provide some business services for same-sex marriages.
The Supreme Court’s decision will make it harder for a state’s dominant political party to gerrymander district voting maps to lock in control.
In a 7-2 decision, justices said the 1st Amendment protects people who send harassing messages if they don’t realize their words are seen as threatening.
In a 8-1 decision, the justices say the Biden administration may focus its efforts on arresting and deporting migrants who pose a current danger.
The Supreme Court rejects a free speech challenge to a long-standing law that makes it a crime to ‘encourage or induce’ illegal immigration.
Supreme Court says that an 1868 treaty with Navajos did not have an implied promise that they would have access to water.
A bid by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds to reinstate her state’s strict ban on most abortions has failed in the state Supreme Court on a split vote.
A majority of justices reject a Texas challenge to the landmark 1978 federal adoption law that seeks to keep Native American children with tribal families.
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The Supreme Court upholds the reach of the Voting Rights Act, ruling that Alabama must draw an election district that would likely favor a Black Democrat.
Union workers have a right to strike but not to damage a company’s property, the Supreme Court rules. ‘Workers are not indentured servants,’ Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson says in a dissent.
In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court limits federal protection for wetlands in a property rights case, saying the Clean Water Act does not usually apply to the marshy areas.
