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WASHINGTON (AP) — Transgender rights, regulation of “ghost guns” and the death penalty are highlights of the Supreme Court's term that begins Monday, with the prospect of the court's intervention in voting disputes lurking within the background.
The justices return to the bench at a time when public trust within the court is waning and calls to limit their terms to 18 years have broad support, including support from Democratic President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the party's nominee for the White House.
Whether by design or coincidence, the justices are hearing fewer high-profile cases than in recent legislative sessions, which featured sweeping decisions by the 6-3 conservative majority on presidential immunity, abortion, guns and affirmative motion.
The shorter timeline would allow them to simply add election cases as they arrive before the Supreme Court within the run-up to the Nov. 5 election between Republican Donald Trump and Harris or immediately afterward.
“I believe there are legal issues that arise from the political process. And that's why the Supreme Court must be prepared to reply if the necessity arises,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told CBS News last month in an interview to promote her new memoir, “Lovely One.”
The court's involvement in election disputes could rely upon how close the result’s and whether the justices' intervention would affect the end result, David Cole, the outgoing legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said at a recent event in Washington.
“I don’t think the court wants to get involved, but maybe it has to,” Cole said.
The court rejected multiple challenges by Trump and his allies to the outcomes of the 2020 election, which he lost to Biden. It has been nearly 1 / 4 century because the Supreme Court effectively decided the 2000 presidential election, through which Republican George W. Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore.
When the justices meet on Monday morning at a date set by federal law, they’ll shake hands as they all the time do. Shortly after 10 a.m. they’ll emerge from behind freshly cleaned heavy red curtains and sit on the curved mahogany bench, Chief Justice John Roberts in the middle chair and his eight colleagues so as of seniority.
There will probably be smiles and personal jokes shared. But the kindness of this moment won’t resolve tensions which were barely concealed.
Over the summer, two justices, Elena Kagan and Jackson, expressed support for tightening the brand new ethics code, which has yet to be enforced.
The leak of the contents of a memo Roberts wrote last winter outlining his approach to the court's decision on presidential immunity “was nothing short of shocking,” Supreme Court lawyer Lisa Blatt said at a preview last week for the approaching term in Washington.
Two years ago, Politico obtained the draft decision overturning the landmark abortion case Roe v. Calf.
“Something actually feels broken,” Blatt said. Describing her experience arguing in court, she said some judges “just seem visibly frustrated.”
Important cases will dominate the court's calendar from Tuesday. The court will challenge the Biden administration's attempt to control hard-to-trace “ghost guns” which were showing up at crime scenes in increasing numbers. The Supreme Court intervened within the case after the conservative fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated the regulation.
Last term, the Conservatives voted 6-3 to repeal a gun regulation that had banned bump stocks, an adjunct that permits some weapons to fireplace at speeds comparable to machine guns. Bump stocks were utilized in the country's deadliest modern mass shooting in Las Vegas.
A day after the gun case, judges will take up the most recent twist in Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip's long quest for freedom. His case is the rare instance through which prosecutors have acknowledged trial errors that led to Glossip's conviction and death sentence.
The highest-profile case on the agenda thus far is a fight over transgender rights involving state bans on gender-affirming care. There will probably be arguments about this in December.
Republican-led states have passed a variety of restrictions on transgender people's health care, participation at school sports, use of restrooms and drag shows. The administration and Democratic-led states have expanded protections for transgender people. The Supreme Court has individually barred the administration from enforcing a brand new federal regulation geared toward protecting transgender students.
The case before the Supreme Court concerns a Tennessee law that restricts puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors. About half of states have enacted similar restrictions.
Also planned for late fall is an appeal by the adult industry to repeal a Texas law that requires pornographic web sites to confirm the age of their users.
Only about half of the court's calendar is full for the term, and several other big cases could still be added. This includes the push by Republican-led states and conservative legal institutions to further restrict federal authorities.
The immediate goal is the best way the Federal Communications Commission funds telephone services for rural and low-income people and broadband services for schools and libraries.
The case, which the federal government has appealed to the Supreme Court, could give justices a likelihood to revive a legal doctrine often called nondelegation, which has not been used to overturn laws in nearly 90 years. Several conservative justices have expressed support for the concept of limiting the powers that Congress can delegate to federal agencies.
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