{"id":127708,"date":"2026-06-24T19:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T19:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/127708\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T19:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T19:34:08","slug":"one-of-the-biggest-myths-about-the-supreme-court-was-just-blown-apart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/127708\/","title":{"rendered":"One of the biggest myths about the Supreme Court was just blown apart."},"content":{"rendered":"

This is part of Opinionpalooza<\/a>, Slate\u2019s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court. Keep up with all of our Supreme Court coverage and analysis by signing up for weekly email roundups<\/a>. The best way to support our work\u2014and unlock exclusive legal analysis\u2014is by joining Slate Plus<\/a>. (If you are already a member, consider a donation<\/a> or merch<\/a>!)<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court\u2019s staunchest defenders in recent years have come up with a stubborn yet plausible-sounding claim: They say that that SCOTUS, dominated by six Republican-appointed justices, does not actually have<\/a> a 6\u20133 split<\/a>. Instead, they insist, there\u2019s a far more nuanced divide<\/a> that does not break neatly along political lines. That assertion, always dubious, was blown out of the water once and for all on Tuesday, when the supermajority delivered four conservative 6\u20133 decisions<\/a> over sharp dissents from the liberal justices. These rulings\u2014in smaller but still important cases\u2014were a blunt reminder that the GOP appointees remain in total control<\/a> of the court and frequently wield their power precisely as the Trump administration wishes. But they also illustrated just how aggressively the supermajority is shredding the legacy of right-leaning swing justices who tried to temper their colleagues\u2019 ideological fervor. In one case, this bloc overturned precedent that permitted lawsuits against corporations for human rights abuses. In another, it gutted individuals\u2019 right to sue for damages over violations of their religious liberty and other freedoms. In a third, it gave the government far more latitude to persecute, detain, and deport green-card holders.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s alarming about these decisions is not just the outcomes, but the fact that the supermajority went as far as it possibly could in each of them. Again and again, it reached out for expansive holdings that did maximum damage to precedent, congressional authority, and civil liberties. There was, it seems, no member of the supposedly \u201cmoderate conservative\u201d bloc that sought to tap the brakes, to exercise caution before radically reshaping the law. All six went full steam ahead in tearing down the guardrails constructed by their more moderate Republican-appointed predecessors. The problem is not merely that the court regularly divides 6\u20133; it\u2019s that among those six, nobody seems inclined to serve as a check on the others\u2019 most sweeping ambitions. With no more swing justices, the supermajority has no one left to pull it back from the brink.<\/p>\n

This dynamic was on full display Tuesday in a trio of 6\u20133 decisions that cast caution to the wind at the great expense of individual rights and democracy. (A fourth 6\u20133 ruling<\/a> had a narrower scope but a similar ideological valence, prioritizing the justices\u2019 apparent antipathy to Cuba\u2019s communist regime over precedent.) Start with Cisco Systems v. Doe<\/a>. The case began when Falun Gong, a religious movement oppressed by the Chinese government, accused Cisco, a multinational corporation, of developing a mass surveillance system that China used to identify, arrest, and torture<\/a> its members. The plaintiffs sued under the Alien Tort Statute, or ATS, alleging that Cisco violated international law. For support, they cited a 2004 SCOTUS precedent called Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, which let courts recognize causes of action under the ATS to enforce \u201cthe law of nations.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response, the supermajority overturned Sosa. Justice Amy Coney Barrett\u2019s opinion for the court declared that courts may no longer let plaintiffs use the ATS to enforce \u201cnorms of international law,\u201d crushing this lawsuit and all others like it. Barrett essentially elevated Justice Antonin Scalia\u2019s partial dissent<\/a> in Sosa into the law, insisting that he was right all along to oppose judicially crafted remedies for violations of the law of nations. In the process, she gutted the ATS\u2014a law signed by President George Washington in 1789\u2014and slammed the door on countless suits against corporations complicit in human rights abuses.<\/p>\n

The dearly departed Sosa was a 6\u20133 decision that brought together the court\u2019s left and center. What changed since 2004? Simple: Three justices in the majority\u2014Sandra Day O\u2019Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg\u2014were replaced by more conservative successors who are often eager to rip up their predecessors\u2019 legacies.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor and Kennedy\u2019s absences, in particular, left the conservative wing without anyone inclined to rein in its antagonism toward international law. As recently as 2018, Kennedy held off<\/a> a frontal assault on Sosa, preserving its core holding. After his departure, the precedent had no more defenders on the right. Justice Sonia Sotomayor hammered this point in dissent, highlighting how Barrett favored \u201cseparate writings\u201d by more conservative justices over a \u201ccontrolling majority opinion\u201d joined by the now-departed moderates. Her colleagues\u2019 execution of Sosa, she bemoaned, \u201cmarks yet another low point in this court\u2019s esteem for its precedents.\u201d The supermajority, she continued, has cut \u201cyet another notch in its belt, unabashedly remaking the law in its preferred image.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sotomayor\u2019s lament applies with equal force to Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections<\/a>, Tuesday\u2019s second 6\u20133 demolition exercise. Justice Neil Gorsuch\u2019s opinion for the court tossed out a lawsuit brought by a Rastafarian inmate, Damon Landor, against the prison guards who forcibly shaved his head<\/a> despite his religious objections<\/a>. Landor sued under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which Congress enacted in 2000 to protect free exercise behind bars. Lawmakers plainly intended<\/a> to let inmates sue for damages<\/a> when correctional officers infringe on their religious liberty. But Gorsuch shut down these suits anyway. He held that RLUIPA is really just a \u201ccontract\u201d between the federal government and the states because it was enacted pursuant to the Constitution\u2019s spending clause as a conditional grant of money to state governments. Thus, it cannot bind individual officers who did not \u201cconsent\u201d to be sued for damages. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in dissent, his far-reaching opinion kneecapped not just this statute but all laws<\/a> enacted under the spending clause, including those \u201cthat secure civil rights, environmental stability, healthcare, and more.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/p>\n

Gorsuch\u2019s cramped view of spending clause legislation as little more than \u201ccontracts\u201d had never before secured majority support on SCOTUS. That\u2019s because, for decades, O\u2019Connor and Kennedy kept it at bay. Each wrote<\/a> or joined<\/a> opinions<\/a> affirming<\/a> the right<\/a> of private plaintiffs to sue under laws enacted through the spending clause. Although they broadly agreed that these statutes created a limited set of rights, they never embraced their conservative colleagues\u2019 crusade to strip private parties of any meaningful way to enforce them. On Tuesday, without these swing justices as a counterweight, the supermajority embraced its maximalist impulses. The result, Jackson wrote, \u201cdevalues precedent and congressional authority alike,\u201d reducing \u201csome of Congress\u2019s greatest legislative achievements\u201d to \u201cnothing more than the wheelings-and-dealings of an especially wealthy private party.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, consider Blanche v. Lau<\/a>, Tuesday\u2019s fourth 6\u20133 blowout. In his opinion for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas authorized border agents to suspend the special status of lawful permanent residents, or LPRs, based on the suspicion that they committed a \u201ccrime involving moral turpitude.\u201d Thomas allowed agents to make this snap judgment themselves, at the border, without \u201cclear and convincing evidence\u201d that the LPR really did commit the offense. As a result, agents may now confiscate LPRs\u2019 green card, detain them, or turn them away, upending the security that Congress sought to grant them.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s the Oddest, Dirtiest Military Tradition. Pete Hegseth Would Hate It. It\u2019s Perfect.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

As Jackson pointed out in yet another dissent, this holding reflects a strikingly stingy view<\/a> of LPRs\u2019 rights that is difficult to square with either the relevant statute or the broader legal framework establishing their special status. LPRs, she wrote, hold \u201cthe same constitutional protections of due process that we accord citizens,\u201d yet \u201cthe majority ignores that crucial fact and empowers government officials to act accordingly.\u201d This, too, marks another sharp break from O\u2019Connor and Kennedy\u2019s more sympathetic treatment of green-card holders and other noncitizens. Both periodically voted<\/a> to uphold<\/a> the rights<\/a> of this group<\/a> and afford them the due process<\/a> guaranteed by the Constitution. While they did not hold uniformly progressive views on immigration, it is difficult to imagine either justice voting to uphold the Kafkaesque nightmare<\/a> that Blanche v. Lau greenlit for LPRs. Both justices treated these individuals as members of the national community. Thomas\u2019 opinion, joined by the entire conservative bloc, treated them like outsiders whose rights may be revoked on a whim.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s most remarkable about the Supreme Court\u2019s sharp break from the approach of its past swing justices is that neither O\u2019Connor nor Kennedy was anywhere close to liberal. Both belonged firmly to the court\u2019s right flank, and when they broke with their conservative colleagues, they often moved not left but toward the center. Each could serve as a moderating force within the conservative majority by withholding their vote until their colleagues agreed to a narrower path. In 2026, though, who is going to tell Thomas to rein in his xenophobia, or ask Gorsuch to tone down his contempt for congressional authority? In Tuesday\u2019s cases, only the liberal justices would play that role. But they hold no sway over the supermajority. And Chief Justice John Roberts appears to have cast his lot<\/a> with the MAGA wing. So we are left with a court that is not only unaccountable, but utterly unmoored from internal restraints on its own power.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Slate\u2019s legal newsletter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate\u2019s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court. Keep up with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[146],"tags":[4084,62992,3428,535,3606,7347,49306,536],"class_list":["post-127708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-john-roberts","tag-amy-coney-barrett","tag-anthony-kennedy","tag-brett-kavanaugh","tag-john-roberts","tag-judiciary","tag-jurisprudence","tag-opinionpalooza-2026","tag-supreme-court"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116806764124447207","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}