Ballroom, ballots and ‘chaos’: The Supreme Court’s busy summer

The Supreme Court reconvenes Monday for a new term, but the justices spent the summer handling emergency disputes tied to the November midterm elections, and several went against President Donald Trump and Republicans. MS NOW legal writer Jordan Rubin describes a pattern in which the court favors the GOP on most matters while turning down its most aggressive demands.

Two rulings issued together last week illustrate the trend. Over dissents from the Democratic appointees, who warned that lawful voters could be endangered, the court let the federal government rely on a citizenship verification database. In the other, all the justices rejected, for the third time, Missouri officials' attempt to use a newly redrawn congressional map after the state's highest court barred it. They wrote that doing so would "usher in electoral chaos." Earlier this month the court also refused Trump's preferred restrictions on mail ballots, with Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissenting. Trump answered on social media that the court's failure would go down negatively in history and said his appointees Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett were "a shell of their original selves." Even so, Kavanaugh, Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts were on the guest list for his state dinner honoring Xi Jinping.

Roberts alone among Republican appointees dissented last month when the court sided with Trump on White House ballroom construction. Transgender prisoners' medical care could be the subject of the administration's next request.

Summarized by PolitiKool from MS NOW’s reporting. Read the full story at MS NOW →