At a public appearance this spring, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. insisted that members of the Supreme Court are not political actors. Yet with the court's new term beginning Monday, scarcely a month before the closely watched midterms, the court may be unable to avoid getting pulled into electoral politics.
Partisans on both sides are primed for potential election challenges, and lawsuits to settle hotly contested elections could end up before the court, potentially with the control of Congress at stake. They would land on top of an already packed docket of cases on culture war issues and President Trump's agenda that were selected by the justices to be heard from the thousands of petitions they receive each year. The result could be another consequential and controversial span on the bench for the justices, even as their public poll numbers have dipped and elected leaders and candidates, particularly in the insurgent wing of the Democratic Party, have called for an overhaul of the court.
The court knows what an extraordinary politicized moment we are in, said Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University Law School. For that reason, the justices would prefer not to be involved in lawsuits that would affect results or allow state officials to affect results. But, he said, if the justices see a true post-election emergency, it's hard to imagine they wouldn't intervene if called on.
The court will hear oral arguments in about 60 cases, starting on Monday with a major environmental lawsuit, and continuing through late April. During that period, they will deliberate at private conferences, draft and exchange opinions and release the court's rulings. The most closely divided decisions are typically announced on the final days of the term in late June or early July.
But the justices also field emergency requests and issue quick-turn orders without a lengthy briefing period or hearing arguments. The new term was foreshadowed by a busy summer for the court, which grappled with a series of emergency requests critical to the nation's political system. The justices blocked both President Trump's plan to dramatically overhaul how Americans vote by mail in the upcoming election and three separate times stepped in to block Missouri from using a congressional map drawn to advantage Republicans.
At the same time, they allowed the administration to deploy an online system combining citizenship information, Social Security numbers and other sensitive data about millions of Americans to help states hunt for supposedly ineligible voters. In each case, the majority issued unsigned orders that academics and advocates said suggested that the justices were trying to avoid changing voting rules or creating confusion for state election officials ahead of November. There is a robust majority of the court that does not want to be the decision maker that's going to be the one allowing the chaos to happen, said Roman Martinez, a lawyer who argues frequently before the court and is a former law clerk to Chief Justice Roberts.
In the mail-ballot matter, election officials from both parties had cautioned that Mr. Trump's mail-in ballot plan would be disruptive and confusing, potentially putting millions of votes at risk. In the Missouri case, the court warned of electoral chaos if the state were to change course so close to the election and use the GOP map, as pressed by Republican officials. Even in the online database case, where the court sided with the Trump administration, the justices seemed to try to dampen the impact on the upcoming election.
They noted that their own ruling could be limited by what's known as a 90-day quiet period before elections that prevents elections officials from making broad changes to state rolls ahead of the vote.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing