Supreme Court Issues Flurry of Rulings Ahead of a Week of Major Decisions

The Supreme Court released several new decisions on Monday morning ahead of a week where several highly anticipated cases, including on affirmative action, are expected to be released.

Summary

The Supreme Court released several new decisions on Monday morning ahead of a week where several highly anticipated cases, including on affirmative action, are expected to be released.

• The court lifted the hold imposed on a Louisiana redistricting case, allowing a separate appeal to advance in the 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals. The decision comes after the court threw out Alabama’s congressional maps for inadequately representing black voters.
• The two decisions in Alabama and Louisiana will likely force both states to redraw their maps and add a second black-majority district in each state. In effect, this decision will likely let Democrats pick up an additional House seat in both states, a significant development in the fight for House control as the GOP has a slim 5-seat majority.
• The Louisiana decision comes ahead of a busy final week for the high court. The Supreme Court is expected to release decisions on cases threatening affirmative action, decide the fate of President Joe Biden’s student loan debt transfer plan, and re-examine the collision between public accommodation laws and free speech in a case where a Colorado wedding website designer declined to make a website for a gay wedding.
• Other cases awaiting decisions include the case of a Christian postal worker who refused to deliver packages on Sundays citing his religious beliefs and the Moore v. Harper case on the power of state legislatures to regulate elections.
• Also on Monday morning, the Supreme Court also threw out a lawsuit from Democratic lawmakers who tried to obtain Trump hotel-related documents while he was in office.
• The plaintiffs dismissed their own suit last month and both the lawmakers and the Biden Justice Department had asked the Court to dismiss it as moot. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the decision to say that she would have used a different mechanism to throw the case out.
• The Supreme Court also ruled Monday to keep in place a ruling from the 6^th Circuit Court of Appeals allowing more than 230 men to sue The Ohio State University over historic sexual abuse by Dr. Richard Strauss. Hundreds of former student-athletes says they were abused by Strauss, who worked at OSU from 1978-1998 and killed himself in 2005.

• CNN covered another decision the court released on Monday morning. The Supreme Court declined to take on a case, Charter Day School v. Peltier, where parents and students sued a North Carolina charter school over their dress code policy that mandates skirts for female students. The court’s decision not to take on the case leaves in place a lower court ruling striking down the dress code as a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14^th Amendment.
• New York Times columnists Bret Stephens and Gail Collins discussed the history of affirmative action and the Supreme Court’s legacy on the subject in anticipation of the Harvard and UNC cases set to be decided this week.
• Politico noted the charter school case “could have upended the charter school industry” had the Supreme Court agreed to take it on, but the North Carolina court’s determination that charter schools are “state actors” could have implications on future legal fights over the role of charter schools in providing public education.

• National Review’s Ed Whelan tries to anticipate which justices would author the ten cases remaining in this term. Whelan expects Chief Justice John Roberts will pen the affirmative action cases, Justice Neil Gorsuch will write the 303 Creative case on free speech and public accommodations, and Justice Samuel Alito will take on the Moore v. Harper case about the Constitution’s Elections Clause.
• The Dispatch’s Advisory Opinions podcast, hosted by Sarah Isgur and featuring New York Times columnist David French, also delved into “Supreme Court bingo” ahead of the week’s major decisions and gave a “lightning round” overview of the Court’s less-prominent recent rulings.
• The Wall Street Journal reported the Supreme Court agreed on Monday to take on a tax case that could undermine Democrats’ plans to tax wealthy Americans and large corporations. The court will hear arguments on the finer points of the 16^th Amendment, the amendment authorizing income tax, in October.

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© Dominic Moore, 2023