Good morning. A Supreme Court altered by Trump is coming into focus. We look at where it's headed.
The Supreme Court justices in April.Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Predictable — and not so much
The latest version of the Supreme Court — with Donald Trump's three appointees — is starting to come into focus. It is both ideologically predictable and unpredictable, depending on the issue.
On many matters, including health care, immigration, crime and several social issues, the court is conservative but not uniformly so. Majorities often transcend ideological lines, with decisions sometimes disappointing conservative activists and pleasantly surprising liberals. "It's nowhere near as bad as people thought," David Cole of the American Civil Liberties Union said last week.
These surprises accomplish a top priority of Chief Justice John Roberts: bolstering the court's image as a nonpartisan institution. A central question about Trump's three choices — Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch — was whether they would take a similar approach to Roberts. He is deeply conservative but cares about forming cross-ideological coalitions. By contrast, Clarence Thomas and especially Samuel Alito are more reliably conservative.
If the three newest justices had joined Alito and Thomas, the five of them could rule the court, without Roberts. So far, however, Barrett and Kavanaugh have voted more like members of the Roberts camp, as Adam Liptak, The Times's Supreme Court reporter, told me. Gorsuch has taken an approach somewhere between Roberts's and Alito's.
'A clump'
"There is a clump in the middle of the court," Adam says. As a result, the three Democratic appointees — Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer — can end up in the majority, as long as they are joined by at least two of the six Republican appointees.
Source: The Supreme Court Database
In this term, the court upheld Obamacare with a seven-justice majority that included the three liberal justices, Barrett, Kavanaugh, Roberts and even Thomas. There were also cross-ideological rulings limiting a federal law on computer crime; favoring an immigrant facing deportation; favoring student free speech; favoring college athletes' ability to be paid; and allowing a Catholic agency to refuse to work with gay parents (but more narrowly decided than conservatives wanted).
To be clear, the court is more conservative than it was a few years ago, when it included Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who was replaced by Barrett) and Anthony Kennedy (who was replaced by Kavanaugh). You can see the new conservatism in rulings limiting government regulations that affect religion, as well as in a decision that expanded the use of life sentences without parole for juveniles.
Still, it's often hard to predict exactly how this conservatism will manifest itself — and who will be in the majority. As Jeannie Suk Gersen wrote in The New Yorker, about the most recent term, "The justices repeatedly defied expectations, with conservatives and liberals together forming majorities in high-profile cases in order to avoid or defer the fighting of deeper wars."
But there are two issues on which the court tends to be both predictable and aggressively conservative: democracy and business regulation.
The two exceptions
The court's conservative majority has ruled on multiple occasions that state officials can restrict voting access and redraw legislative districts without violating federal law. The state officials enacting these measures are almost always Republican, and many political experts believe that the measures will help the party win elections.
The court's democracy rulings cut against Roberts's preferred image of the court as an institution above partisan politics: Six Republican-appointed justices are issuing decisions that benefit Republican politicians, even when doing so conflicts with principles of majority rule. "This court will smile upon even the worst vote suppression efforts being undertaken by Republican legislatures," Scott Lemieux of the University of Washington has written.
The most recent example came last week, in a six-to-three decision — along partisan lines — that upheld two Arizona voting restrictions. The decision was sweeping enough that civil rights advocates will struggle to bring future cases alleging discrimination in voting access, legal scholars say.
The second area where the justices tend to be reliably conservative is business regulation. They generally take a laissez-faire approach that is skeptical of government oversight, hostile to labor unions and deferential to corporations. In the most recent term, the court made it harder for consumers to sue companies for misbehavior and harder for labor unions to organize farmworkers.
These rulings continue a long tradition of the court siding with businesses over workers, as the journalist Adam Cohen argued in "Supreme Inequality," a recent book. "The Supreme Court has played a critical role in building today's America, in which income inequality is the largest it has been in nearly a century," Cohen wrote.
Business regulation is one of the few high-profile areas in which the liberal justices regularly join conservative rulings. "Contrary to a narrative out there, most decisions in business cases are not decided by narrow majorities," Daryl Joseffer, the chief legal counsel at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said on a recent call with journalists. Breyer is the Democratic appointee who most often sides with business.
And the future?
What does this mean for the future of the court? I see three questions to watch in the next term, which starts in October:
Will Barrett's more moderate approach continue? New justices are often cautious in their first term, Adam Liptak says. Sometimes, that moderation continues, and sometimes it does not.
Will the court's unpredictability apply to abortion? Next term's highest-profile case offers the justices a chance to overturn Roe v. Wade. But the justices' approach to this past term suggests that the most likely outcome may be a significant restriction of abortion access that still stops well short of overturning Roe.
How aggressive will the justices' pro-business approach be? The court has agreed to hear a case that touches on a legal principle known as "Chevron deference," which essentially gives government regulators flexibility to interpret federal law. If the court overturns Chevron deference, it would be a big deal, limiting the Biden administration's ability to regulate corporations — including its ability to regulate pollution and fight climate change.
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ARTS AND IDEAS
Ashrita Gandhari, 14, of Ashburn, Va., has worked with three spelling coaches to prepare for Scripps.Nate Palmer for The New York Times
A generation of spelling bee champs
Every year, about 11 million kids in the U.S. participate in school-level spelling bees. The most ambitious middle and elementary schoolers set their sights on the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which takes place this week.
Take a look at the recent winners, and there's a well-documented pattern, as Anna Kambhampaty writes in The Times. Every year since 2008, a South Asian American child has been crowned a champion at the competition. This year, at least nine of the 11 finalists are of South Asian descent.
The trend can be traced back to 1985, when Balu Natarajan became the first child of immigrants to win Scripps. That win prompted an outpouring from people of South Asian descent. "We really had no idea that we were doing this for a community," Natarajan said. "We were just this tiny fraction of the participants."
Now, there are spelling bees tailored to South Asian children and coaching companies founded by South Asian Americans. Indian grocery stores often feature fliers for local bees. "The community created an infrastructure for the kids to really thrive and excel in this area," Shalini Shankar, an anthropologist, said.
The pangram from Friday's Spelling Bee was bogeymen. Yesterday's were mourning,rumoring and unmooring. Here is today's puzzle — or you can play online.
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The U.S. government is spending $80 million to train thousands of minorities in public health technology and improve health data collection involving race and ethnicity.
The U.S. government is spending $80 million to train thousands of minorities in public health technology and improve health data collection involving race and ethnicity. It is part of the Biden administration's efforts to "root out pervasive health and socioeconomic inequities" in the nation's healthcare system, according to an announcement issued this month by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). "Ensuring that diverse representation is better reflected all throughout our health care system is priority for the Biden-Harris administration," said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, a former California attorney general who served a dozen terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. "With this funding, we will be able to train and create new opportunities for thousands of minorities long underrepresented in our public health informatics and technology fields."
In Massachusetts, the Wellesley Public Schools system was already reeling under controversy for a series of events tied to "diversity, equity and inclusion" when a conservative watchdog group announced it had obtained records showing that schools use "affinity spaces that divide students and staff based on race."
The FOIA request was prompted by the April 15 congressional testimony of Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. In her testimony, Dr. Walensky said: "The CDC is providing technical assistance to the Office of Refugee Resettlement for the people who are leaving the DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and Customs and Border Protection."
Starting this fall Virginia will offer illegal immigrants discounted in-state tuition at taxpayer-funded colleges as well as financial aid to attend private universities. This month the state's governor, Ralph Northam, signed the new law during a heavily publicized visit to Marymount University, a private Arlington college with an enrollment of about 3,200. "These students have grown up in our communities across Virginia," the Democrat lawmaker said during the signing. "They've attended the same schools as their classmates and neighbors, they have taken the same tests, they have played on the same teams, eaten in the same lunch rooms and even gone to the same dances. They are valued members of our communities, and they are Virginians in every sense of the word except for immigration status – something that was chosen for them, not by them, by families just wanting a better life for their children."
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected yet another attempt to dismantle the Affordable Care Act (ACA). [1] This is huge and a victory for families across the country—the ACA is here to stay!
While we celebrate this decision, it is also important to recognize that this Republican-led effort to rip health care away from tens of millions of people happened in the middle of a pandemic! Furthermore, the fight against expanding health coverage is still alive and well in over a dozen states as their legislatures refuse to adopt (or in some cases implement) the expansion of health care to low-income uninsured adults. [2] We need a federal solution to help get health coverage to the more than two million poor uninsured adults who live in these non-expansion states. [3]
What's the deal? When the ACA passed, Congress intended for low-income uninsured adults to gain coverage through the expansion of Medicaid—a joint federal and state program that provides health insurance coverage to millions of people across the country. However, a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision made the expansion of Medicaid optional for states. [4] Thus far, 38 states including Washington, D.C. have expanded Medicaid, but there are still 12 states refusing the expansion which has left millions of people in the Medicaid coverage gap.
These 12 states are primarily in the South, where eligibility for Medicaid is still extremely limited. For example, the median income limit for parents to qualify for Medicaid is just 41% of the poverty level or an annual income of $8,905 for a family of three in 2020. And in nearly all of these states, childless adults remain ineligible for coverage altogether. [5]
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how important it is for everyone to have health care coverage, especially in communities where large health disparities have long been present. In states that expanded Medicaid, racial disparities in both coverage and access to care has drastically decreased. In fact, the gap in uninsured rates between white and Black adults shrunk by 51% in expansion states. [6] Medicaid expansion was also associated with a significantly lower rate of maternal death. Expansion of Medicaid with improved access to coverage and care is crucial, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis.
When you click, you'll automatically sign on to our letter that reads:
Dear Member of Congress,
The COVID-19 pandemic has made crystal clear the need for everyone to have access to quality, affordable health care coverage. However, there are still 12 states refusing to expand Medicaid, leaving over 2 million uninsured poor adults left in the Medicaid coverage gap with no realistic access to health coverage.
With the majority of these states in the South, more than 55% of uninsured adults are Black, Hispanic, or Asian, reaching as high as 72% in some states. The residents of these 12 states—especially people of color—are being denied the right, benefits, and dignity of health care coverage granted to Americans in the other 38 states. Congress fully intended this right when it expanded Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act.
In states that have expanded Medicaid, there have been great strides taken toward narrowing racial health gaps, including fewer maternal deaths for Black and Hispanic women. Medicaid expansion has saved lives across the country, as well as saving money and improving people's overall health and well-being. These benefits should not be denied to Americans simply because of where they live—especially in regions that already bear long, enduring legacies of structural racism and violence.
Please support a federal solution to close the health coverage gap for people in states that refuse to expand Medicaid.
