The cases for the 2023-2024 term of the Supreme Court — which spanned from the first Monday in October until early July — have gone seemingly unnoticed given the anticipation of the election. Attention should be shifted, even temporarily, to these cases.
Three cases of immense importance are Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the N.A.A.C.P. regarding racial gerrymandering, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo; Relentless v. Department of Commerce on agency funding and City of Grants Pass v. Johnson about restrictions on homelessness.
Though none of these cases have grabbed attention similar to the 2022 Dobbs decision which overturned 1973’s Roe v. Wade, the conservative majority within the Supreme Court continues to make decisions that will significantly impact us.
In a 6-3 ruling in the case of Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the N.A.A.C.P., the conservative bloc majority overpowered the liberal bloc minority. This allowed the Court to reverse a lower-ruling court’s decision that a congressional map was “unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.”
The lower court ruled in favor of the NAACP that a South Carolina election map was altered to assign thousands of Black voters to different districts, making it racial gerrymandering, which is defined as redrawing districts on the basis of race. However, when it reached the Supreme Court majority, they ruled the gerrymandering was not for racial reasons, but for partisan reasons, meaning it was based on what party the voters were affiliated with.
Democrats and republicans utilize gerrymandering in state and nationwide elections. The capacity for congressional districts and state districts to be redrawn allows the altering of the balance of power in congress and the states and gives one party a considerable — and debatably unfair — advantage. Both sides strategize how to counter the other’s gerrymandering but by doing so, it disregards the actual communities and voters, merely defining them by their vote and, some voters have claimed, by their race.
This ruling is one of many over the past 15 years that have amplified money’s role in politics, made it easier to restrict voting and exempted partisan gerrymandering from review in federal court. This recent case allows for tactics such as gerrymandering to be deemed not only acceptable but constitutional.
The second case regarding the power of federal agencies, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo; Relentless v. Department of Commerce, was another 6-3 conservative bloc majority decision that resulted in the reduction of federal agency power.
This decision overturned the precedent set by the 1984 case, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which in essence, required courts to defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of environmental, healthcare, consumer safety, energy and government benefit program violations. The decisions once given to expert agencies are now solely given to congress and to judges.
This change of precedent will have extreme influence over the entire federal government. Elected officials in our courts, instead of agency experts, now hold all the power to interpret statutes without the input of agency experts.
This last case is especially close to home: City of Grants Pass v. Johnson. The Supreme Court upheld legislation in Oregon aimed at preventing homeless people from sleeping and camping outside.
As many Oregonians have observed, homelessness is rampant in the West. Even though previous lower court cases have always ruled against the criminalization of homelessness and addiction, making homelessness illegal will cause major changes regarding law enforcement’s actions toward the homeless.
And how was this decision made? In a 6-3 conservative bloc majority.
These three cases show stark differences in the beliefs of the Supreme Court. But the display of polarizing party views is only an effect of the rulings, not the reason. These rulings give more power to the courts and less power to the public, experts and houseless populations’ (human) rights.
These were some of the most politically divided decisions, but that’s not to say there weren’t any mixed decisions. Yet, even with some variance in decisions, there is a clear political divide in our Supreme Court, an uneven one, which now borders an unjust one.
My intention is not to say that these Supreme Court decisions will change the landscape of American politics indefinitely. But they will impact us all, especially as the Supreme Court Justices are intended to live out a lifelong appointment, and most of the current justices will serve for the majority of our lifetimes.
As long as the Supreme Court has a lopsided majority and the Supreme Court Code of Ethics is not being upheld to prohibit “outside influence,” Supreme Court cases will become more and more political based on the executive who appoints them.
More politicians are taking action against the politicization of the Supreme Court.
On July 10, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced articles of impeachment against United States Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and on July 29, in a Washington Post op-ed, President Biden called for an enforceable code of ethics, proposing a new justice appointment system in which the president appoints a justice every two years for an 18-year term.
The judicial system’s integrity is being brought into question, and accountability is being demanded. But let’s not forget, as distant as the Supreme Court may seem, the cases they decide on trickle down fast. Your vote for president is effectively a vote for how you want the Supreme Court to be filled.