The start of a new Supreme Court term isn’t something that most Americans put on their calendars. But after the last term demonstrated just how eager the court’s conservative majority is to reshape the nation in its ideological image, the new term that started Oct. 3 bears watching — with trepidation. Numerous hot-button topics are on the court’s docket this term, indicating the majority isn’t done fiddling with settled law in service to one side in the culture wars.
The court’s decision last term eliminating the constitutional right to abortion was such a thunderclap that it was easy to overlook the broader narrative: On other key ideological issues as well — separation of church and state, the federal government’s environmental authority, local gun safety laws — the newly empowered majority behaved less like unbiased arbiters of the law than Republican politicians in robes.
The cases the court has agreed to hear this term indicate more of the same may be in store.
A case out of North Carolina could protect the partisan gerrymandering that has helped red state legislatures to seat Republicans in Congress beyond their actual level of public support. State courts have at times blocked that strategy. Here, plaintiffs are asking the court to validate a fringe legal theory that says state courts don’t have jurisdiction over legislative redistricting decisions — that these fervently partisan state lawmakers should be unrestrained in their partisan mischief, in other words.
