The Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade may have captured the public’s attention, but the Supreme Court also issued several opinions this week with significant ramifications for American life and law.
Summary
The Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade may have captured the public’s attention, but the Supreme Court also issued several opinions this week with significant ramifications for American life and law.
- In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court allowed President Joe Biden to end former President Donald Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, overturning a lower court’s decision that forced the program to remain in place.
- On Monday, the 6-member conservative majority ruled a high school football coach who prayed on the 50-yard line after games was protected by the First Amendment.
- In a major ruling, the Court ruled Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency lacked the authority to regulate coal- and gas-fired power plant emissions under existing law. Congress will have to pass new legislation if it wants the EPA to regulate this extensively.
- In a partial reversal of the 2020 McGirt case, the Supreme Court increased state power over Native American tribes by allowing states to prosecute non-Native Americans who commit crimes against Native Americans.
- The Court agreed to hear a North Carolina case on the “independent legislature doctrine,” or the theory that state legislatures have wide power to draw district lines without court influence. Oral arguments will begin in the fall.
- Finally, Justice Stephen Breyer retired on Thursday. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in as his successor, becoming the first black woman on the Supreme Court.
- The New York Times lamented the Court’s ruling in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, writing the decision leaves Biden “with few tools to combat climate change.” The Times argued the ruling makes it “mathematically impossible” for Biden to meet his climate goals, with potentially “severe” consequences for the environment. Of course, the Democratic-controlled Congress could pass legislation on this matter at any time.
- The Washington Post assessed how each Supreme Court justice ruled in the major decisions of the 2022 term with a series of graphics breaking down the Court’s majorities in the term’s major cases.
- CNN argued the Supreme Court’s “right turn has shaken the country” as it “reached into every corner of American life… and is not finished.”
- Allies of Justice Clarence Thomas told Fox News that the left’s attacks on the court’s longest-serving justice have failed with his influence over the court at a “zenith.” Thomas, once often the lone dissenter, now regularly leads a majority of justices in major decisions.
- National Review praised the Supreme Court’s “historically great term,” thanking the justices for having “repeatedly stood up for the Constitution and the rule of written law to the point of rolling back ground seized by the anti-constitutionalists.”
- The Commentary Podcast invited legal scholar Adam White to discuss the Court’s decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency and its “implications for the administrative state.”
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© Dominic Moore, 2022
