Supreme Court will end term with a bang

The 2022-2023 Supreme Court term is set to end with a bang, as four major cases are still undecided.

Justices have yet to issue rulings on key lawsuits that could upend affirmative action in college admissions, President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan, LGBTQ+ civil liberties and the federal election process.

Although the Court’s terms always begin on the first Monday in October, there is no hard end date. The Court’s website notes that sessions usually “continue until late June or early July.”

The Court agreed to hear 59 cases for argument during the 2022-2023 term, but 30 cases remain undecided as of Thursday.

“The major rulings do tend to bunch up at the end of the term,” Alex Badas, a political scientist focused on judicial politics, told Newsweek. “Major cases typically have longer majority opinions and more concurring and dissenting opinions. So it takes longer for the justices to complete the process.”

Only two June dates remain on the Court’s calendar: June 15 and 16. There is also a conference scheduled for June 22, when additional opinions could be released.

“Another reason these opinions are taking a long time is the justices know the media will be covering them and they want to make sure to produce strong, compelling and persuasive opinions,” Badas said.

The current session is the second session featuring the Court’s relatively new conservative supermajority. The Court moved from a slim 5-4 conservative majority to a solid 6-3 majority after Justice Amy Coney Barrett was nominated by former President Donald Trump to succeed the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Barrett was confirmed to the bench in October 2020.

The first term with the new majority saw a number of bombshell rulings, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade last June. Meanwhile, the Court’s approval rating has fallen amid a series of ethical controversies. A Marquette University Law School poll released last month found that only 41 percent of Americans approve of the nine justices.

Here’s a breakdown of the four major cases still on the docket:

Affirmative action: Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. the University of North Carolina

Last October, the justices heard oral arguments in a pair of similar cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The plaintiffs argued that the schools’ admission processes have discriminated against white and Asian American applicants while favoring Black and Latino students.

The cases have been brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a conservative group that wants schools across the country to immediately stop using race or ethnicity to boost an application.

Not every college uses affirmative action, and those that do are limited in how they use a race-based approach. Earlier Supreme Court decisions said that there could be no quotas for students of certain backgrounds and that other factors, like test scores and extracurriculars, needed to be considered. The practice is already banned in nine states: Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington.

The Court has supported the use of affirmative action in college admissions for nearly 50 years. If the justices rule in favor of Students for Fair Admissions, the decision would be one of the biggest reversals since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Student Loan Forgiveness: Department of Education v. Brown and Biden v. Nebraska

In February, the justices heard two cases challenging the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plan, which would eliminate some student loan debt for an estimated 20 million Americans and provide relief for another 20 million.

Last year, Biden announced that the administration would forgive up to $10,000 in federal student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.

But immediately after the plan, which delivers on a Biden campaign promise, was announced, Republican-led states and other conservative groups took the administration to court, arguing that the president violated his executive authority.

Most federal student loans have been frozen since March 2020 as part of a pause meant to protect borrowers who were financially affected by the COVID pandemic. However, the freeze is set to expire soon. The Department of Education has said that student loans will resume accumulating interest in September and that payments will have to start up again in October.

LGBTQ+ Civil Liberties: 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis

The Court will also decide a case involving religion and the rights of LGBTQ+ people before this term ends.

In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, Lorie Smith, a Colorado web designer, says that her religious beliefs prevent her from offering her wedding website designs to gay couples. She also says she wanted to add a note to her website explaining that she was creating websites only for opposite-sex couples.

Doing those things, however, would go against the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which prohibits businesses open to the public from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, among other characteristics.

Smith is arguing that the Colorado law violates her free speech and religious rights. The Supreme Court said it would take up the case only as a free speech issue.

The Colorado law is the same one that was the center of the 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission case, in which baker Jack Phillips refused to bake a cake for a same-sex couple. The justices ruled narrowly for Phillips and did not rule on the free speech issue.

Gerrymandering and Democracy: Moore v. Harper

This case asks the Supreme Court to decide whether the North Carolina Supreme Court has the power to strike down a congressional map drawn in the state Legislature that was allegedly gerrymandered illegally.

GOP North Carolina legislators are appealing a state Supreme Court ruling that blocked a congressional map that passed in a party-line vote in 2021, saying the decision violated the state constitution. The partisan map awarded 10 seats to Republicans and four to Democrats.

To make their argument, the legislators are advancing the “independent state legislature theory” (ISL), which says the state courts and state constitution are powerless in matters related to federal elections. The theory “would radically reshape the workings of American government,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed an amicus brief with the North Carolina Supreme Court.

When the Supreme Court denied emergency relief to the legislators in March, three of the Court’s conservative members—Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch—voiced support for ISL.

If the Court rules in favor of the legislators and ISL, state legislators would be granted more power and authority over federal elections, which would likely affect the 2024 presidential election.