WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday weighed in on a number of politically charged issues, including gun control, gender-affirming care for minors and whether adults can be required to show identification to access pornographic websites. I’m back again to address the issue.
However, it is also possible that judges will be drawn more directly into politics through election-related issues before and after the Nov. 5 election.
Democrats and Republicans have filed dozens of lawsuits across the country over voting rules and other election issues, and the cases could reach the high court, especially so close to the presidential election.
“I think there are legal issues that arise from the political process,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told CBS in September when asked if the court was ready for an election. If that’s what you need. ”
The court could also be asked to go retroactively into the criminal case against former President Donald Trump.
In a blockbuster ruling in July, the majority granted immunity protections to Trump and other presidents, but how those protections should apply to all charges pending against him remains unclear. remained unclear.
If Trump wins, the Supreme Court’s most senior conservative justices could look to exit, giving Trump, who appointed three justices in his first term, a chance to further reorganize the court. Probably.
If Vice President Kamala Harris is elected, speculation will focus on whether the most senior liberal justice, Justice Sonya Sotomayor, is prepared to step down.
But first the judge must deal with a controversial case that begins hearing this week.
Has Biden gone too far on ‘ghost guns’ and e-cigs?
One of the first issues they will consider is the Biden administration’s move to require manufacturers of untraceable weapons kits to conduct background checks on customers and serialize their products, which would eliminate “ghost guns.” The question is whether it can be regulated.
Like last semester’s case about whether bump stocks can be banned because they make semi-automatic weapons imitate automatic fire, this case does not directly implicate the Second Amendment. Instead, the focus is on whether the regulations are consistent with the “plain meaning” of existing law, or whether the administration is trying to rewrite gun control laws, something only Congress can do. is.
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In a separate case challenging regulators, the court will decide whether the Food and Drug Administration is unfairly blocking the sale of flavored vape pens.
The industry claims the FDA has imposed a de facto ban on most flavored e-cigarettes.
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The FDA counters that while it approves some tobacco-flavored e-cigarette products, it rejects more than 1 million e-cigarette products that include candy and other flavors appealing to children.
Alison LaCroix, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, said both the e-cigarette case and the ghost gun case are from the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, a popular venue for challenging the activities of federal agencies. He points out that the case has been brought to the Supreme Court. .
And such challenges often find a receptive audience in the high court, “sending a message that there is an interest in overseeing what the executive branch is doing,” LaCroix said. said.
Can states require age verification on porn sites?
State, but not federal, regulations are the subject of two other high-profile lawsuits.
In the Texas case, courts are being asked to decide whether requiring age verification would overburden the free speech rights of adults who view certain types of online pornography.
Texas claims it is trying to protect children, but the American Civil Liberties Union also joined the website, saying online verification is not the same as showing a driver’s license to buy alcohol or explicit magazines. He claims that there is no. They argue that uploading identifying information risks exposing users to hackers and accidental leaks.
“They don’t trust what happens to their information once they put it on the internet,” Jeremy Blodge, a lawyer who litigates constitutional and regulatory issues, recently told Liberal Cato. He spoke at the research institute.
Blodge said many states are experimenting with ways to protect children online, increasing the potential impact of pornography cases.
Can states ban gender-affirming care for minors?
Many states (about half) are also seeking to ban various types of gender-affirming care for minors.
The court will hear the Biden administration’s challenge to Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy.
The government and the ACLU, which represents families opposed to the ban, argue that the law discriminates on the basis of gender. Testosterone may be prescribed for teenagers whose birth sex was male, but it may not be prescribed for teenagers whose birth sex was female.
Tennessee states that the state is “interested in encouraging minors to understand their sexuality” and prohibits treatment that “may encourage minors to despise their sexuality.” declared that he was interested in doing so.
Although a district court ruled against the state, the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Court of Appeals said the law was not discriminatory.
Using testosterone to treat gender dysphoria is not the same as, for example, using it to treat boys born with an extra copy of the X chromosome, a condition that leads to decreased production of testosterone, court rules. said that opinions are divided.
“Each state may authorize different treatments for individual diagnoses,” Justice Jeffrey Sutton wrote for the three-judge panel.
Deepak Gupta, an appellate lawyer who tracks the Supreme Court’s work, said the case has critical implications for states’ power to regulate medical care for minors and also states that discrimination based on discrimination in 2020 He said it could also serve as a referendum on the landmark Supreme Court decision of 2017. A person’s gender identity is a form of sexism.
“This is clearly a blockbuster case for this term,” said Gupta, “a term that otherwise seems designed to be sleepy.”
