A number of landmark decisions, all of which the US Supreme Court has rendered, cover everything from school reading lists to healthcare coverage.
Before taking a few months of recess, the court made its final decisions for the 2024 term on Friday. In October, the nine justices on the bench will convene again.
The justices, however, made headlines before they left. The six-person conservative majority decided to limit the ability of courts to impose universal injunctions that would block executive actions nationwide, a significant victory for the president’s administration.
Trump has consistently attacked his executive branch’s use of court injunctions.
The conservative majority on the Supreme Court banded together again in two other decisions. In one decision, parents were able to opt out of LGBTQ-themed educational materials, while the other gave Texas the go-ahead to place restrictions on young people’s access to online porn.
However, some conservative justices sided with their three left-wing colleagues when they made the decision regarding healthcare access. Their final decisions for the 2024 term are presented in this summary.
The court upholds the rules for preventive care.
The Supreme Court’s usual ideological divides were broken up in Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, which was a result of this case.
Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Elena Kagan joined the court’s liberal branch, which includes three conservative justices: Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and John Roberts.
A government task force’s ability to determine what types of preventive healthcare were required by the nation’s insurance providers.
The Affordable Care Act, a piece of legislation passed under former President Barack Obama to expand access to healthcare, was the most recent case to challenge its constitutionality.
A section of the act that allowed a panel of health experts under the Department of Health and Human Services to determine what preventive services should be covered for no cost was the subject of this case.
However, a group of people and Christian-owned businesses had objected to the task force’s legality.
They claimed that the expert panel was in violation of the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, which mandates that the president choose and approve certain political appointees.
Prior to the task force’s decision, the group had successfully prevailed in favor of the group’s request that all HIV prevention medications be classified as preventive care.
The Supreme Court’s decision did not consider that particular injunction. Justice Kavanaugh, speaking for the majority, argued that the task force was legitimate because it consisted of “inferior officers” and didn’t require Senate approval.
Texas’s age restrictions on pornography are rejected by the court.
In an effort to protect minors from offensive content, several states, including Texas, require users to verify their ages before accessing pornographic websites.
Free Speech Coalition v. Ken Paxton was the subject of the Supreme Court’s scrutiny of Texas’ law on Friday, according to the case.
The Free Speech Coalition is a non-profit organization that works for adults’ entertainment. The attorney general of Texas, Paxton, was sued by the group for contending that the age-verification law would impair First Amendment protections, which include the right to free expression, free association, and privacy.
The plaintiffs noted the dangers associated with sharing personally identifying information online, including the possibility of leaking sensitive data like birthdates. For instance, the American Civil Liberties Union warned that Texas’s law “robs people of anonymity.”
Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged in a letter to the conservative majority on the Supreme Court that “submitting to age verification is a burden on the exercise” of First Amendment rights.
However, he added that “adults have no First Amendment right to completely disregard age verification.” The majority of the time upheld Texas’s law.
The court grants children the right to reject LGBTQ educational material.
With the ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority continued its long history of victories for religious freedom.
The Montgomery County Board of Education in Maryland, where books with LGBTQ themes had been approved for use in primary school textbooks, was the subject of the case.
A picture book called Love, Violet, for instance, told the tale of a young girl who mustering the courage to give a Valentine’s Day to a female classmate. Another book, Pride Puppy, follows a young girl looking for her missing dog in a parade to honor LGBTQ pride.
Parents of the school district’s students criticized the content on religious grounds, and some books, like Pride Puppy, were eventually dropped.
However, the board eventually made the announcement that it would block parents from withdrawing from the approved material because it would disrupt the learning environment.
Some education officials claimed that the inclusion of LGBTQ people in mainstream culture would impose a stigma on those who identify as LGBTQ and that this was simply a fact of life.
Justice Samuel Alito claimed in the majority’s decision that the education board’s policy “conveys that parents’ religious views are not welcome in the “fully inclusive environment” that the Board claims to foster.”
According to Alito, “the curriculum itself also betrays an attempt to impose ideological conformity with particular views on sexuality and gender.”
The use of nationwide injunctions is restricted by the court.
The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, it seems, decided another decision, which was probably the biggest of the day.
The Trump administration had appealed the use of nationwide injunctions all the way to the country’s highest court in the case Trump v. CASA.
Trump’s executive order, which he signed on the first day of his second term, was in danger. The Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution sought to simplify the concept of birthright citizenship.
Almost everyone who was born on US soil would be granted citizenship regardless of their parents’ nationality in the past.
Trump has, however, criticized the overuse of birthright citizenship. He placed restrictions on the birthright of a person based on their parents’ immigration status in his executive order.
As soon as the executive order was made public, legal arguments erupted against the decision to support birthright citizenship regardless of the parent’s nationality. Federal courts in states like Maryland and Washington quickly enacted injunctions to stop the executive order from being effective.
The Supreme Court did not consider whether Trump’s decree regarding birthright citizenship was valid on Friday. However, it did evaluate a petition from the Trump administration, contending that the judicial system had overreacted.
Trump backed off of the conservative supermajority, saying that specific plaintiffs’ needs should be the focus of any injunctions. However, class action lawsuits might be one of the possible exceptions.
The majority’s decision was written by Amy Coney Barrett, the court’s most recent addition and Trump appointee.
