The Supreme Court nears the end of another momentous term. A decision on Trump’s immunity looms
WASHINGTON — In the last ten days of June, at a frenetic pace of his own creation, the High Council much of American society was thrown into a flurry of decisions about abortion, guns, the environment, health, the opioid crisis, securities fraud and homelessness.
And with the final court hearing of the semester taking place on Monday, unusual for a July hearing, the most anticipated decision of the semester is yet to come: whether former President Donald Trump is immune from prosecution for his role in the U.S. riots Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The court will also decide whether state laws that limit how social media platforms regulate content posted by their users are unconstitutional.
The immunity case was the last to be heard, on April 25. So in some ways it’s not unusual for it to be one of the last to be decided. But the timing of the court’s ruling on Trump’s immunity could be just as important as the final verdict.
By holding the case until early July, the justices have reduced, if not eliminated, the chance that Trump will face trial before the November election, regardless of what the court decides.
In other epic lawsuits related to the presidency, including the case of the Watergate tapesthe judges proceeded much more quickly. Fifty years ago, the court ruled and forced President Richard Nixon to hand over recordings of conversations in the Oval Office just 16 days after hearing arguments.
Even this term, the court made a decision in less than a month unanimously for Trump that states cannot invoke the post-Civil War insurrection clause to kick him off the ballot over his refusal to accept Democratic President Joe Biden’s victory four years ago.
Delaying the start of the trials is one of the main goals of Trump’s lawyers across four criminal cases against him. There was only one trial and it resulted in his belief for falsifying corporate records to cover up a hush-money payment made during the 2016 presidential election to a porn actress who says she had sex with him, which he denies. Trump is the first former president to be convicted of a crime.
The Supreme Court’s consideration of the immunity case, which began when the justices rejected an initial request to hear the case in December, has led critics to say the court has so far granted Trump “immunity by delay.” A federal appeal unanimously rejected Trump’s immunity claim in February, and the justices agreed to hear Trump’s appeal a few weeks later.
The court hearing the case also has three Republican-nominated justices — Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Two other justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, have rejected calls to recuse themselves from the case over questions about their impartiality.
On Friday, the justices voted 6-3 to limit a federal obstruction charge that has been used against hundreds. 6 January suspects, and Trump. In that case, Alito and Thomas participated again and five conservatives were in the majority. Chief Justice John Roberts, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch were the other three.
Conservative judges generally don’t side with criminal defendants, said Kim Roosevelt, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
“But it’s a Trump thing, and so the lineup is less of a surprise and more of a disappointment,” Roosevelt said. “It increasingly appears that a majority of this Court is willing to bend the normal rules in Trump’s favor.”
The other big unresolved issue — state laws to regulate social media platforms — could also have an ideological tinge.
The court weighs efforts in Texas and Florida that would restrict how Facebook, TikTok, X, YouTube and others social media platforms regulate content posted by their users.
While details vary, both laws were intended to address conservative complaints that the social media companies were liberal-leaning and censored users based on their views, especially on the political right.
The Florida and Texas laws were signed by Republican governors in the months after decisions by Facebook and Twitter, now X, to shut down Trump over his posts about the Capitol riot his followers.
Wednesday the judges a lawsuit dismissed brought by other Republican-led states against the Biden administration over claims that federal officials wrongfully forced the platforms to remove controversial posts related to COVID-19 and election security.
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