WASHINGTON (AP) — In the last 10 days of June, the Supreme Court, at a self-imposed frenzy, touched broad swathes of American society with a barrage of decisions on abortion, guns, the environment, health care, the opioid crisis, securities fraud and homelessness.
And as the court meets for the last time this legislative session on Monday—an unusual date that has been pushed back into July—we are about to face the most eagerly awaited decision of the legislative session: whether former President Donald Trump will be granted immunity from prosecution for his role in the riots at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The court will also decide whether state laws that limit social media platforms’ ability to regulate content posted by their users violate the Constitution.
The immunity case was the last to be heard on April 25, so in some ways it’s not unusual that it’s among the last to be decided. But the timing of the court’s decision on Trump’s immunity could be as crucial as the final ruling.
By holding the case until early July, the judges have reduced, if not eliminated, the chance that Trump will have to face trial before the November election – regardless of the court’s decision.
In other epic court cases involving the presidency, such as the Watergate tapes, the justices moved much more quickly. Fifty years ago, the court issued its decision forcing President Richard Nixon to release recordings of Oval Office conversations just 16 days after hearing arguments.
Even this legislative session, in less than a month, the court unanimously ruled in Trump’s favor, ruling that states could not invoke the Civil War-era Insurrection Clause to disqualify him from the election because of his refusal to recognize Democratic President Joe Biden’s victory four years ago.
Delaying the start of trials has been a primary goal of Trump’s lawyers in all four of Trump’s criminal cases. Only one trial took place, which led to his conviction on charges of falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money payment during the 2016 presidential election to a porn actress who claims she had sex with him, which he denies. Trump is the first former president to be convicted of a crime.
The Supreme Court’s handling of the immunity case, which began when the justices denied an initial request to begin the case in December, has led critics to say that the court has so far granted Trump “immunity by delay.” A federal appeals court unanimously denied Trump’s immunity request in February, and the justices agreed to hear Trump’s appeal a few weeks later.
In addition, the court hearing the case has three Republican-nominated justices – Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Two other justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, have rejected calls to recuse themselves from the case because of doubts about their impartiality.
On Friday, the justices voted 6-3 to limit a federal obstruction of justice charge brought against hundreds of defendants from the Jan. 6 case, as well as against Trump. This case again involved Alito and Thomas, and five conservatives made up the majority. Chief Justice John Roberts, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch were the other three.
Conservative judges generally do not side with the accused, said law professor Kim Roosevelt of the University of Pennsylvania.
“But it’s a Trump case, and so the lineup is less a surprise than a disappointment,” Roosevelt said. “It increasingly looks like a majority of this court is willing to bend the usual rules in Trump’s favor.”
The other major unresolved issue – government laws regulating social media platforms – may also have an ideological coloring.
The court is reviewing efforts in Texas and Florida to limit the way Facebook, TikTok, X, YouTube and other social media platforms regulate the content posted by their users.
While the details vary, both laws aim to address conservative complaints that social media companies have a liberal bent and censor users based on their views, particularly those on the right.
The Florida and Texas laws were signed by Republican governors in the months after Facebook and Twitter (now X) decided to block Trump for his posts related to his supporters’ riots at the Capitol.
On Wednesday, the judges dismissed a lawsuit filed by other Republican-led states against the Biden administration, alleging that federal officials wrongfully forced the platforms to remove controversial posts related to Covid-19 and election security.
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