Abortion, guns, religion top a big Supreme Court term
WASHINGTON – The future of abortion rights is in the hands of a conservative Supreme Court that is beginning a new term Monday that also includes major cases on gun rights and religion.
The court’s credibility with the public also could be on the line, especially if a divided court were to overrule the landmark Roe v. Wade decision from 1973 that established a woman’s right to an abortion nationwide.
The justices are returning to the courtroom after an 18-month absence caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and the possible retirement of 83-yearold liberal Justice Stephen Breyer also looms. It’s the first full term with the court in its current alignment.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the last of former President Donald Trump’s three high-court appointees, is part of a sixjustice conservative majority. Barrett was nominated and confirmed last year amid the pandemic, little more than a month after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Trump and Republicans who controlled the Senate moved quickly to fill the seat shortly before the 2020 presidential election, bringing about a dramatic change in the court’s lineup that has set the stage for a potentially lawchanging term on several high-profile issues.
With abortion, guns and religion already on the agenda, and a challenge to affirmative action waiting in the wings, the court will answer a key question over the next year, said University of
Chicago law professor David Strauss. “Is this the term in which the culture wars return to the Supreme Court in a big way?” Strauss said.
The justices will hear arguments Dec. 1 in Mississippi’s bid to enforce a ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Lower courts blocked the law because it is inconsistent with high court rulings that allow states to regulate but not prohibit abortion before viability, the point around 24 weeks of pregnancy when a fetus can survive outside the womb.
Mississippi is taking what conservative commentator Carrie Severino called a “rip-the-band-aid-off” approach to the case by asking the court to abandon its support of abortion rights that was laid out in Roe and the 1992 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Mississippi is among 12 states with so-called trigger laws that would take effect if Roe is overturned and ban abortion entirely.
By a 5-4 vote in early September, the court already has allowed a ban on most abortions to take effect in Texas, though no court has yet ruled on the substance of the law. But that vote and the Mississippi case highlight the potential risk to the court’s reputation, said David Cole, the American Civil Liberties Union’s legal director. The arguments advanced by Mississippi were considered and rejected by the Supreme Court in 1992, Cole said.
“The only difference between then and now is the identity of the justices,” he said.
Jeff Wall, a top Justice Department lawyer under Trump, said the court could sharply expand gun rights and end the use of race in college admissions, but only abortion is likely to move public perception of the court. “I still don’t think that’s going to create some groundswell in the public, unless it’s accompanied by some kind of watershed ruling on abortion,” Wall said.
In early November, the court will take up a challenge to New York restrictions on carrying a gun in public, a case that offers the court the chance to expand gun rights under the Second Amendment. Before Barrett joined the court, the justices turned away similar cases, over the dissents of some conservative members of the court.
Until Barrett came along, some justices who favor gun rights questioned whether Chief Justice John Roberts would provide a fifth, majority-making vote “for a more expansive reading of the Second Amendment,” said George Washington University law professor
Robert Cottrol, who said he hoped the court would now broaden gun rights.
More than 40 states already make it easy to be armed in public, but New York and California, two of the nation’s most populous states, are among the few with tighter regulations.
The case has gun control advocates worried.
“An expansive Second Amendment ruling by the Supreme Court could restrict or prohibit the sensible solutions that have been shown can end gun violence,” said Jonathan Lowy, vice president and chief counsel at the gun violence prevention group Brady.
A case from Maine gives the court another opportunity to weigh religious rights in the area of education. The state excludes religious schools from a tuition program for families who live in towns that don’t have public schools.
Since even before Ginsburg’s death, the court has favored religion-based discrimination claims and the expectation among legal experts is that parents in Maine who sued to be able to use taxpayer money at religious schools will prevail, though it’s not clear how broadly the court might rule.
Affirmative action is not yet on the court’s agenda, but it could still get there this term in a lawsuit over Harvard’s use of race in college admissions. Lower courts upheld the school’s policy, but this is another case in which the change in the composition of the court could prove decisive. The court upheld race-conscious admission policies as recently as five years ago but that was before Trump’s three appointments accentuated the court’s conservative tilt.