The Supreme Court of the United States returned Monday for a session largely focused on freedom of expression, the carrying of weapons and civil rights, with decisions potentially having serious consequences for the 2024 elections at stake.
The nine judges appointed for life, six by Republican presidents and three by Democrats, find themselves in a climate of deep suspicion, fueled in particular by the largesse granted by billionaires to the two most conservative judges, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
The prestige of this crucial institution of American democracy has sunk to unprecedented levels. Only 41% of Americans approve of his action, according to a Gallup poll released Friday.
A few dozen demonstrators gathered in front of the Court on Monday, brandishing signs calling for the resignation of Clarence Thomas and the judges to no longer “defend billionaires”.
But the Court, which owes much of this discredit to the overthrow of two pillars of liberal society in the 1960s and 1970s, the federal guarantee of the right to abortion and affirmative action at the university, could be in the process of calm down.
Division
“The penultimate session was a disaster for civil liberties and rights”, particularly due to the decision on abortion in June 2022, observes David Cole, legal director of the influential rights organization civic ACLU.
But during the following session, the judges were “much less often divided” according to the political color of the president who appointed them, including on “controversial issues”, underlines David Cole.
According to him, the next debates will make it possible to understand whether the Court is divided “six against three, or, as many think, in 3-3-3: the three appointed by Democratic presidents against the three extremist conservatives”, with the other three justices, including President John Roberts, “who determine the results.”
Professor of law at George Mason University, Jennifer Mascott considers that the judges are more divided between “five conservatives” and the four others, including Mr. Roberts.
“The president rallies when the decision can be formulated in such a way as not to explicitly overturn important case law,” explains this jurist who worked with Justice Thomas and one of his current colleagues, Brett Kavanaugh.
“Race and political affiliation”
Among the thirty files on the agenda, few appear likely to further disrupt the lives of Americans, unless the Supreme Court decides to add conditions of access to the abortion pill or the rights of transgender people.
But after a first session on Monday devoted to semantic questions in the interpretation of a law on penalties for drug trafficking, from Tuesday, it will delve into the financing of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), responsible in particular to regulate credit.
A confirmation of the ruling of an ultra-conservative federal appeals court concluding that the financing of the CFPB, created after the 2008 crisis, was unconstitutional, could trigger a chain reaction in the economy.
The Court’s decisions should also weigh on the legislative and presidential elections of 2024, while electoral maps are the subject of legal disputes in around ten states.
She will thus rule on the electoral division of the Republican majority in South Carolina which “exiled 30,000 African-American citizens from their previous constituency”, according to the trial judges.
If partisan electoral division (“gerrymandering”) is authorized, it is prohibited on racial grounds. “However, in many places, race and political affiliation merge,” underlines David Cole, hence the difficulty of “disentangling one from the other”.
The Supreme Court will also intervene on the rules of public debate, which promises to be fierce in view of 2024. It will examine the laws on content moderation imposed on social networks by two states with a Republican majority denouncing a “censorship” of conservative opinions.
And for the first time since a ruling in June 2022, it will address the issue of carrying weapons, which is particularly significant in the United States.
Judges will have to arbitrate between their interpretation of this right enshrined in the Second Amendment of the Constitution and a federal law prohibiting people subject to a removal order for domestic violence from possessing a weapon.