The Supreme Court is set to hand down its next batch of opinions Thursday morning, with most of the term’s biggest rulings still outstanding on abortion, guns, Donald Trump’s criminal immunity and much more.
The justices don’t announce which rulings are coming ahead of time, and opinion days are scheduled on a rolling basis until the decisions are done, which is typically the end of June but could stretch into July. The court is also set to issue rulings Friday.
Here’s what we’re watching for:
- Abortion. Two key rulings on reproductive rights. There’s the dispute over mifepristone pill access and the collision between a federal law guaranteeing emergency room care and Idaho’s near-total abortion ban.
- Guns. The court confronted its recent expansion of Second Amendment rights with an appeal questioning the constitutionality of a law barring gun possession for people subject to domestic violence restraining orders. Hunter Biden and his lawyers will be watching this one closely, after his gun conviction under a law that could be affected by the forthcoming ruling in United States v. Rahimi. There’s also a pending decision on the Trump-era bump stock ban.
- Trump and Jan. 6. In addition to Trump’s immunity claim that has been delaying his federal election interference trial, there’s also a pending decision on the scope of obstruction charges used against Jan. 6 defendants (including Trump).
And that’s not all. Far from it. Rulings are due on environmental protections, federal agency power, social media, homelessness and the multibillion-dollar Purdue Pharma opioid bankruptcy settlement. Even that heavy roster doesn’t account for all of the cases left, including a free speech appeal that somehow involves Trump indirectly as well, over trademarking the phrase “Trump Too Small” for T-shirts.
Given all that the court must decide besides immunity, combined with its lack of a rush to hear argument in that case, it’s unsurprising that the justices haven’t decided it yet. And ruling on a compressed timeline doesn’t always lead to the court’s best work, as we saw in the 14th Amendment ballot ruling earlier this year that cleared Trump to run again despite his involvement with the Jan. 6 insurrection. But if nothing else, this recap shows that the court is once again set to issue rulings touching on seemingly every aspect of American life — beyond just Trump, though he looms large on the court’s handpicked docket. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for weekly updates on the top legal stories, including news from the Supreme Court, the Donald Trump cases and more.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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