Over the course of 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a number of significant choices. Its rulings include those that have pushed up on the Biden administration’s sought change of Title IX protections for trans students, reversed a 40-year law that had supported what conservatives have condemned as the administrative condition in Washington, and considered the constitutionality of Republican-controlled state efforts to limit what they identify as democratic Silicon Valley biases online. Additionally, the high court sided with a Jan. 6 respondent who filed a federal blockage charge and decided on political immunity at a crucial moment for the 2024 election. The justices have taken major cases into account in these cases over the past month. Department of Education v. LouisianaThe Supreme Court on Aug. 16, 2024, kept primary rulings preventing the Biden-Harris leadership from implementing a new concept that widened the definition of gender bias under Title IX to include sexual orientation and gender identity, while dispute over the law continues. The Department of Education contacted the Supreme Court after the Fifth and Sixth Circuit Courts of Appeal refused to grant the administration’s request to place a stay on the injunctions, contending that some provisions of the rule should be able to become effective. The Supreme Court turned down their request. ” Importantly, all Members of the Court today accept that the plaintiffs were entitled to preliminary injunctive relief as to three provisions of the rule, including the central provision that newly defines sex discrimination to include discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity”, the court’s unsigned opinion said, concluding that the Biden administration had not “adequately identified which particular provisions, if any, are sufficiently independent of the enjoined definitional provision and thus might be able to remain in effect “.In April, the Department of Education issued the new rule implementing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, arguing that expanding the definition of discrimination to include” sexual orientation and gender identity” would protect LGBTQ students. Louisiana was one of the states that sued the DOE, alleging that the new rule “violates students’ and employees ‘ rights to bodily privacy and safety.” Republicans claimed that Biden’s new rule would have significant effects on women’s and girls-only spaces and possibly legally support biological males competing in women’s sports after Title IX implemented the long-standing athletics regulation that allowed sex-separate teams decades ago. Separate court injunctions blocked the rule from taking effect in 26 states. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement at the time,” I’m grateful that the Supreme Court agreed not to block our injunction against this radical rewrite of Title IX.” Title IX has been the most successful law in history in ensuring equal opportunity for women in education at all levels and in collegiate athletics, aside from the 19th Amendment, which guarantees our right to vote. This fight isn’t over, but I’ll keep fighting to block this radical agenda that eviscerates Title IX”. In a ruling that vigorously upheld the platforms ‘ free speech rights, the Supreme Court on July 1, 2024, suspended efforts by Texas and Florida to limit how Facebook, TikTok, X, YouTube, and other social media platforms regulate content. Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court, arguing that platforms should be free from government interference in deciding what to include or not to include in their space. ” The principle does not change because the curated compilation has gone from the physical to the virtual world”, Kagan wrote in an opinion signed by five justices. The overall outcome was agreed upon by all nine justices. The justices sent the cases back to lower courts for further analysis in broad disputes involving the companies ‘ trade associations. While the details vary, both laws aimed to address long-standing conservative complaints that the social media companies were liberal-leaning and censored users based on their viewpoints, especially on the political right. In the months that Facebook and Twitter ( now X ) decided to block then-President Trump over his posts related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, Republican governors signed the laws for Florida and Texas. Trade associations representing the businesses filed federal lawsuits alleging that the laws violated platforms ‘ speech rights. One federal appeals court struck down Florida’s statute while another upheld the Texas law, but both were on hold pending the outcome at the Supreme Court. Gov.. said in a statement made when he signed the Florida law. It would be “protection against the Silicon Valley elites,” according to Ron DeSantis. Greg Abbott signed the Texas law, he said it was needed to protect free speech in what he termed the new public square. There is a dangerous movement by social media companies to silence conservative viewpoints and ideas, according to Abbott, but social media platforms “are a place for healthy public debate where information should be able to flow freely.” ” That is wrong, and we will not allow it in Texas,” NetChoice LLC claimed in a lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody. ” The judgments are vacated, and the cases are remanded, because neither the Eleventh Circuit nor the Fifth Circuit conducted a proper analysis of the facial First Amendment challenges to Florida and Texas laws regulating large internet platforms. The court stated that NetChoice’s decision to litigate these cases as facial challenges is justified. Face challenges have been made difficult to win by the Court. In the First Amendment context, a plaintiff must show that’ a substantial number of]the law’s ] applications are unconstitutional, judged in relation to the statute’s plainly legitimate sweep.’ No one has given much thought to that problem so far in these cases. The Supreme Court ruled on July 1, 2024, that former presidents have substantial protection from prosecution, and that the justices “did not address the full range of activities the laws cover, and measure the constitutional against the unconstitutional applications.” Trump v. United States Trump had moved to dismiss his indictment in a 2020 election interference case based on presidential immunity. The case was not dismissed by the court, but the ruling did ensure that the 45th president wouldn’t be tried in court before the November 2024 election. The justices did not apply the ruling regarding whether or not Trump is barred from prosecution for actions that relate to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the court reversed the case to a lower court in a 6-3 decision. ” The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official”, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. The President is not a man of the law. However, the Constitution’s responsibilities to the Executive Branch may not be criminalized by Congress. And the system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energetic, independent Executive”. Trump will take office on January 20, 2025, having won the presidential election in 2024. The Supreme Court overturned the landmark decision from 1984 in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council on June 28, 2024 in a 6-3 decision. Known as Chevron deference, the 40-year-old decision instructed lower courts to defer to federal agencies when laws passed by Congress were too ambiguous. It served as the foundation for dozens of federal agencies ‘ approval of thousands of regulations, but conservatives and business groups have long made it a target of criticism for granting too much power to the executive branch, or what some people refer to as the administrative state. According to Roberts, federal judges must now “exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.” The decision does not call into question previous cases that had relied on the Chevron doctrine, Roberts wrote. The reversal makes it so executive branch agencies will likely have more difficulty regulating the environment, public health, workplace safety and other issues. Atlantic herring fishermen sued over federal regulations that required the payment of independent observers to monitor their catch. The National Marine Fisheries Service allegedly violated the rules set forth in the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and that officials were not permitted to establish industry-funded monitoring requirements. In two related cases, the fishermen asked the court to overturn the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine, which stems from a unanimous Supreme Court case involving the energy giant in a dispute over the Clean Air Act. In that case, the court upheld a decision made by the Environmental Protection Agency under Ronald Reagan. Chevron has remained a foundation of contemporary administrative law for the decades that have followed, requiring judges to consider congressional statutes in accordance with reasonable interpretations. The current Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has been increasingly skeptical of the powers of federal agencies. The Chevron decision has been questioned by justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch. Ironically, Anne Gorsuch, the mother of former EPA Administrator, was the one to decide the Supreme Court upheld in 1984. The Biden administration argued that overturning Chevron would be destabilizing and could bring a” convulsive shock” to the nation’s legal system. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a participant in the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021 who had challenged his conviction for a federal obstruction crime on June 28, 2024. Joseph Fischer, a former police officer and one of the more than 300 people charged by the Justice Department with “obstruction of an official proceeding” in the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, filed a lawsuit against the former police officer. His lawyers argued that the federal statute should not apply, and that it had only ever been applied to evidence-tampering cases. The Supreme Court upheld a narrower interpretation of a federal statute in a 6-3 decision that criminalizes anyone who “alters, destroys, mutilates, or attempts to do so with the intention of impairing the object’s integrity or its availability for use in an official proceeding.” The Supreme Court of Justice handed the case back to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals after the justices ‘ ruling overturned a lower court’s ruling that the justices claimed was too broad into areas like peaceful but disruptive conduct. The Justice Department argued that Fischer’s actions were a “deliberate attempt” to stop a joint session of Congress directly from certifying the 2020 election, thus qualifying their use of the statute that criminalizes behavior that “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do” and carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. Roberts contends that the government overreached the law. The peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next was the subject of an unprecedented attack on our system of government on January 6. I am disappointed by today’s decision, which limits an important federal statute that the Department has sought to use to ensure that those most responsible for that attack face appropriate consequences”, Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement reacting to the ruling. He claimed that this ruling won’t have an impact on the vast majority of the more than 1,400 defendants who were detained for their illegal actions on January 6. The Associated Press, Chris Pandolfo, Bill Mears, Shannon Bream, Brooke Singman, Brianna Herlihy, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The most significant Supreme Court decisions of 2024: from repealing Chevron’s doctrine to removing national resistance.
