The big SCOTUS decisions looming
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As the White House sees it, there is a recurring villain in the drama of President Trump's second term. Judges. It's very, very clear that this is an activist judge. From these radical, rogue judges. We have bad judges. We have very bad judges. And these are judges that shouldn't be allowed. That was White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and of course, Trump himself, who was speaking to Fox News.

Many of Trump's actions have ended up before federal judges. His administration has pushed the limits of executive power, acting without Congress. Trump has reshaped and eliminated federal agencies. He's made major changes to U.S. immigration policy, and he's imposed massive tariffs.

And many of those actions have been blocked in court, as Levitt complained in a White House briefing last month. President Trump had more injunctions in one full month of office in February than Joe Biden had in three years. Nationwide injunctions allow a federal judge at the district level to block a policy from taking effect all across the country.

So a federal judge in, say, New York can block an executive order that would affect the entire country. These are real judges in the court of law who are trying to block the president's power and the policies that he was elected to enact. Now, many legal scholars argue that there's a reason Trump is facing so many injunctions and losing cases in front of judges appointed by both Republicans and Democrats.

Here's Kate Shaw, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, testifying before a Senate subcommittee this month. The reason there has been such wide and cross-ideological consensus over the impermissibility of the administration's actions is because the actions have been plainly unlawful, and that has been clear to jurists of all stripes.

The fate of nationwide injunctions currently hangs in the balance, as Levitt alluded to in that briefing. We hope that the Supreme Court will weigh in and rein them in. Any day now, the court will issue a decision that could do away with those injunctions and give the Trump administration more room to exert unilateral power. Consider this. That's one of many big opinions the Supreme Court will issue in the weeks ahead. After the break, we'll look at what's to come and what it could mean.

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It's Consider This from NPR. Around this time every year, the U.S. Supreme Court ends its term with a bang. The justices typically save their biggest rulings for June. And so NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg is here to talk about what she is looking at and what we can expect. Hi, Nina. Hi, Ari. Some really important orders you're expecting are in cases that were not argued this term. What's going on there?

You know, Ari, to some extent, the Supreme Court used to be a relatively stately beat with its own kind of rhythm and predictability. But something happened in the first Trump administration that in the second Trump administration has now morphed into a phenomenon that has really changed the nature of the court's work. How so? What's the change? Well,

Well, put simply, the emergency docket, sometimes referred to as the shadow docket, is taking up more and more of the justices' time. There's always been an emergency docket. What's different now? Yes, there was always an emergency docket, you know, for death penalty cases, for example, or maybe an election case.

But the tale here is really in the numbers. In the two Bush and Obama administrations, and here we're talking about a period of 16 years, the government filed a request for emergency action only eight times. So now let's look at the second Trump term. Again, the numbers tell the tale. In the first 20 weeks of the second administration,

Trump sought emergency actions from the court in 19 cases, and the justices have so far ruled in favor of the administration in 10 of the 12 decided cases. These are consequential cases involving the administration's efforts to lay off federal workers, shutter federal agencies, and deport people without due process. The bottom line here is that the workload at the court has increased exponentially on the emergency docket.

And the court is most often deferring to the president, blocking the decisions of lower courts without explanation, and then telling them to spend months litigating these critical disputes further, regardless of the impact on whole agencies or people rounded up for deportation. Interesting. And then there's the entire docket of cases that have been briefed, argued, were waiting for the outcome on what's left to decide there.

There are 20 cases left, about a third of the docket. Almost certainly the biggest one is birthright citizenship, the case in which President Trump claims that the Constitution doesn't guarantee citizenship to babies born in the United States. To date, no judge, including Republican-appointed judges, has agreed with Trump's legal claim.

But the administration, I think knowing that they would lose birthright citizenship, didn't actually appeal those lower court rulings. Yes, the Justice Department asked the court to block them, but for a different reason.

The administration claims that those lower court judges exceeded their power when they made their rulings that apply not just to the litigants or the region, but to the whole country. In other words, Trump is trying to prevent lower court judges from issuing rulings that bar policies found to be illegal in the whole country. So that's the top case you're watching. What else are you looking out for?

The case testing state laws that bar minors from having access to puberty blockers as they transition away from their sex at birth.

Twenty-five states have enacted laws banning gender-affirming care for minors. And these trans kids and their parents contend that these laws unconstitutionally discriminate against them based on sex because the same medications they are banned from using are legal for other conditions in minors, conditions like endometriosis or early-onset puberty.

This conservative court has really redefined religious freedom over the last several terms. Are we likely to see that again before the end of this term?

Yes, there's a very important case that has school administrators shaking in their boots. It's a case in which parents want to be able to have an opt-out provision in public school, excusing their children from class when the material being used, in this case it was books with some LGBTQ characters, is offensive to the parents' religious views.

If the Supreme Court sides with the parents, and it certainly sounded that way at the oral argument, school officials fear that everyone would want to opt out of something, leading to frequent disruption in classes. And then what are the other cases of the 20 that you're paying close attention to? There's an important case challenging a Texas law that, in an effort to crack down on kids' access to pornography, requires everyone, including adults, online to provide proof of age first.

There's also another challenge to the Affordable Care Act. This time, opponents of the ACA are targeting a measure that requires all insurance companies to provide certain free preventive care. It's something millions of people now take for granted. And, you know, there's always the possibility it could be thrown out. And there's more, but Ari, I'm just tired thinking about this. Well, we'll be with you for the rulings. Look forward to hearing your coverage. NPR's Nina Totenberg. Thank you, Ari. Thank you.

This episode was produced by Brianna Scott and Connor Donovan. It was edited by Krishnadev Kalamur and Jeanette Woods. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.

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