Supreme Court turns toward an explosive final month with Trump’s priorities at stake

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court is facing an extraordinary showdown with Donald Trump as the justices scramble to finish more than two dozen opinions before the end of the month — with a president who will lash out if any decisions don’t go his way.

Pending decisions on executive power, immigration, mail ballots and the Second Amendment could all have an outsize influence on the next two years of Trump’s presidency. Of the 26 cases the high court is expected to decide before the end of June, the Trump administration took an active role in all but one.

Topping the list is a series of appeals dealing with Trump’s power to fire officials within the executive branch that Congress tried to insulate from presidential control. The court must also rule on the president’s attempt, via an executive order, to end birthright citizenship as it has been understood in the United States for more than a century.

All of it will play out amid an odd political dynamic with the president, who has made clear he will use his bully pulpit to strike out at the court in unusually harsh terms if he loses. When the court tossed out Trump’s emergency global tariffs in February, the president quickly convened a press conference at the White House to claim the justices who voted against him were an “embarrassment to their families.”

Trump is already reacting to an expected loss on birthright citizenship, after making history as the first siting president to attend an oral argument.

“They will be ruling against us on Birthright Citizenship, making us the only Country in the World that practices this unsustainable, unsafe, and incredibly costly DISASTER,” Trump posted on social media in mid-May. “I don’t want loyalty, but I do want and expect it for our Country.”

At the same time, Trump recently invited the court’s conservatives to a state dinner with King Charles III and boasted in May that “two great justices” turned out for the swearing-in of Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh. Justice Clarence Thomas swore in Warsh and Justice Brett Kavanaugh attended.

The final month of the term will represent a test of the court’s spine in dealing with the new administration, but it may also underscore that some of the appeals the president has served up are in line with where the court’s 6-3 conservative majority was moving long before Trump returned to the White House.

“This court has a long-term ideological project and some of these cases are squarely within it,” said Ben Wizner, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is opposing the administration in several cases. “But I do think the court has lines. And I think we’ve seen some of those already.”

‘You’re fired’

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that “The Apprentice” president made firings a central theme of the Supreme Court’s final weeks before recessing for its summer break.

Trump is attempting to fire Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor, over allegations that she committed fraud by claiming two properties as her principal residence. Cook has denied wrongdoing.

When the court heard arguments in January, the justices signaled they were inclined to side against Trump – a decision that would likely ease market fears that presidents going forward would be blocked from meddling with an independent agency with vast sway over the American economy.

Related is a case about Trump’s effort to fire Rebecca Slaughter, a member of the Federal Trade Commission. Slaughter argues that federal law requires presidents to show cause, such as malfeasance, before removing members of the FTC. The court’s decision could implicate other agencies within the federal government that for decades have enjoyed protection from the whims of presidential politics.

The justices appeared far more open to Trump’s position when they heard arguments in December. In fact, Chief Justice John Roberts and other members of the court’s conservative wing have for years expanded the power of the president to fire the officials who occupy the executive branch. In that sense, Trump’s case was well timed for a court that was already warming to the idea of giving presidents more muscle to control “independent agencies.”

Both cases — Cook and Slaughter — deal with firing independent government officials. In Slaughter, Trump has argued that he doesn’t need cause to fire officials at the FTC and other agencies. In Cook, Trump has claimed that he had cause because of the mortgage paperwork. One of the questions for the court is how — or whether — such claims can be reviewed.

The Supreme Court, meanwhile, has signaled that it views the Fed as different from other independent agencies, because of its historic role in the economy.

“Trump’s agenda to expand the unitary nature of the executive branch’s organization succeeds because it is only jumping on the court’s own bandwagon,” said John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who clerked for conservative Thomas.

Yoo framed the final weeks of the Supreme Court’s term not as a showdown with the president, but “rather the court continuing its march on these agendas and Trump succeeding or not based on whether he is acting consistently with them.”

Birthright citizenship returns

For the second year in a row, birthright citizenship will take center stage in the final weeks of the Supreme Court’s work.

Last year, a 6-3 majority of justices limited the ability of courts to temporarily shut down Trump’s birthright order and other administration policies. This month, the court is weighing whether the policy itself is legal.

Trump signed an order on his first day back in office barring agencies from issuing passports and other documents to people whose parents are not citizens or green card holders. While that policy is geared at “birth tourism,” it would also sweep in millions whose parents are in the country legally.

Three decades after the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, the Supreme Court ruled in US v. Wong Kim Ark that people born in the United States – in that case, the son of Chinese immigrants – are entitled to US citizenship, with a few narrow exceptions. But the Trump administration is arguing that the precedent has long been misunderstood.

“We’re in a new world now,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the administration’s top appellate attorney, said during arguments in April.
Eight billion people, he added, “are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a US citizen.”

“Well, it’s a new world,” Roberts fired back. “It’s the same Constitution.”

Late in its term, the Supreme Court announced it would also decide whether Trump could terminate temporary deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals. The court’s decision on Temporary Protected Status for some 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians could ultimately affect more than a million people.

Transgender athletes long-shot

The Supreme Court is also returning to transgender rights a year after its conservative majority let stand state laws that bar trans care for minors.

This year, the court is considering laws enacted by Idaho and West Virginia that prohibit transgender girls from competing on girls’ sports teams. The justices are weighing whether those laws are consistent with the 14th Amendment and a landmark 1972 federal law that bars discrimination in schools.

Its decision could affect similar laws in more than half the country.

One of the cases comes from Becky Pepper-Jackson, a West Virginia high school student. The other is from Lindsay Hecox, a senior at Boise State University. When the court heard arguments in the cases in January, it signaled it was likely to allow the state laws to stand.

The court has repeatedly ruled against LGBTQ advocates over the past year. A year ago, it allowed the Trump administration to enforce a ban on transgender service members in the military. Nearly five months after the decision on trans care, a majority of justices let the administration require US passports to include a traveler’s sex at birth, rather than a person’s gender identity.

Second Amendment showdown

The court is also considering a number of appeals dealing with the Second Amendment.

The most notable involves a federal law that bars people who are an “unlawful user” of drugs from owning guns. A majority of the justices appeared prepared to limit the government’s ability to enforce that law against a frequent marijuana user, though just how far that reasoning will extend to other people is an open question.

In an unusual twist, the Trump administration in defending the law has wound up on the opposite side of the National Rifle Association and other Second Amendment groups that want to limit the law.

The court is also considering a Hawaii law that blocks people from carrying guns onto private property that is open to the public — such as retail stores — without the explicit approval of the property owner. The justices signaled during oral arguments in January that it was likely to strike down that law. Four other blue states – California, New York, New Jersey and Maryland – have similar regulations, though the challengers contend that Hawaii’s is the most extreme.

Picking midterm winners

With a major ruling gutting the Voting Rights Act and a subsequent series of redistricting decisions, the Supreme Court has already had an impact on this year’s midterm elections.

But there will be more to come this month.

The court is reviewing Watergate-era limits on how much money can be spent by parties in coordination with a candidate’s campaign. The Republican National Committee wants the justices to lift those limits under the First Amendment, despite a 2001 precedent that upheld them. Experts say that outcome would shift the flood of money that pours into elections every other year away from super PACs and toward the political parties.

And it’s an outcome that experts believe would benefit Republicans more than Democrats.

Even more significant is a case challenging laws in 14 states that allow mail-in ballots to be counted if they are received after Election Day. The grace period is intended to account for mail delays, but it has been criticized by Republicans as Trump has harped, without evidence, on widespread fraud in mail balloting.

Election administrators have warned of chaos and voter confusion if the ballot deadlines in certain states are moved up for this year’s midterm. Opponents have said that election officials can simply notify voters of the change.

Those decisions will land as the justices have already appeared on edge about claims of partisanship in recent election rulings.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in particular, has been outspoken in criticizing the court for its handling of those cases and the appearance of political motive. Roberts, meanwhile, recently defended the court against charges of politics, telling an audience in Pennsylvania that such claims were an inaccurate “understanding of what we do.”

In both election-related cases, Trump is asking the high court to side with the Republican position.

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