The following is a look at what the court achieved on this condition and what its decisions mean for the future: The red states – given the green light by the Supreme Court – moved quickly to impose abortion bans and extreme restrictions, and abortion rights advocates sought to slow the imposition of new bans. The ruling was a major victory not only for anti-abortion activists, but also for the conservative legal movement, which saw Roe v. Wade as the leader among many examples of the Supreme Court creating rights that lack explicit references to the text of the Constitution. In practice, Dobbs’s opinion means that state and federal lawmakers now have the power to impose restrictions on abortion up to and including immediate bans, although they are already facing litigation by abortion rights advocates who claim that some of its constitutions protect the right to abortion. . The fact that the court overturned a previous 49-year-old – which was rooted in a deeply divisive issue affecting the most personal decision faced by pregnant women and their families – was remarkable. “Whatever the exact extent of the forthcoming laws, one result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights and their status as free and equal citizens,” the liberal judges wrote in their disagreement.

The Conservative majority 6-3 made gun safety laws much more vulnerable to legal challenge in a case called the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, which concerned New York restrictions on public armaments. The kind of discretionary status – in which the gun holder must obtain special, discreet approval to carry the gun in public – that has been abolished in the case has been adopted by only a few other states, although these states contain some of the largest populations. centers of the country. The biggest impact of the majority opinion written by Judge Clarence Thomas is that lower courts are now instructed to look at gun restrictions with more skepticism. He wrote that the Constitution “hypothetically” protects the behavior covered by the plain text of the second amendment. It will be up to the government to seek to impose a new restriction to prove to the courts that “the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historic tradition of regulating firearms,” ​​Thomas said. According to Thomas’s new test, the courts must assess whether the regulation in question has any historical parallel with the approach to firearms at the time of the drafting of the Constitution. Thomas stressed that the historical concepts of weapons apply to modern firearms technology, but said that the absence of a historical analogy to a regulation could make the regulation unconstitutional.

A case of climate change that weakens the power of the executive

The Supreme Court has dealt a major blow to both the Biden administration’s efforts to tackle climate change and the broader powers of the executive branch to regulate various policy areas. The court did so Thursday in a case called West Virginia v. EPA, where judges were considering a lower court ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency, under a 1970 provision of the Clean Air Act, had extensive power to issue rules targeting carbon emissions at power stations. A 6-3 Conservative majority overturned this decision, using a legal logic that can now be used against a number of other types of regulation where government agencies are accused of exceeding their authority. Judges in the EPA case have completed a legal doctrine known as the Doctrine of Major Questions, which states that in order for a service to issue a rule with significant economic or political implications, it must have been explicitly mandated by Congress to do so. The court – reviewing a never-enforced Obama administration climate rule that the Biden administration did not seek to revive – said Congress had not given the EPA the power to enforce the sweeping regulations proposed by the EPA. of Obama. The decision is likely to reinforce future challenges to a climate rule for power plants that the Biden government has been working to develop. And it could provide food for lawsuits against other types of federal climate regulations, such as those targeting car emissions or emissions from the oil and gas industry. It will also involve regulations from other agencies across the federal government, as decades of congressional stalemate have made executive agencies a major source of policy.

Weakening of the walls between church and state

The Conservative court has reshaped the playing field around issues related to religious freedom and the separation of church and state. In one case, a 6-3 majority said Maine could not exclude religious education from the voucher program offered to parents living in rural areas without public schools. In another case, the court – again ruling ideologically – sided with a public high school coach who retaliated professionally for praying on the pitch after football matches. Not every case of religious freedom before the court was so divisive. Court 8-1 ruled that Texas should allow a death row inmate to “lay hands” on him in prayer during his execution. And the court voted unanimously against Boston for refusing to raise a Christian flag over a flagpole outside City Hall as part of a program to celebrate the wider Boston community. According to Mark Rienzi – chairman of the Becket Fund for Religious Freedom – the line that connects the Boston Flag case to the Maine voucher case and the high school football coach praying was the Supreme Court that clarified how governments should see the founding clause. Rienzi said governments for decades at all levels had internalized an interpretation of the patent clause that pushed them to treat those who make religious expression worse than other types of actors. Overall, the lesson to the court is: “Hello, governments, this is not the way you are supposed to do it,” Rienzi told CNN.

Complicating the road to blocking immigration policies in court

While immigrant rights advocates secured a short-term victory with a ruling that said immigration law allowed President Joe Biden to end a controversial Trump-era immigration policy, that decision – and another – earlier in office – – is likely to hamper future legal efforts to end so-called illegal immigration policies. In the two judgments, the Supreme Court limited the power of the lower courts to prevent the implementation of certain immigration policies that were allegedly illegal. In the previous case, Garland v. Gonzales, the Conservative majority 6-3 said lower courts could not offer total relief in such cases – involving policies related to the arrest, detention and deportation of immigrants. This case was later referred to the court decision on the end of the term on the so-called stay policy in Mexico implemented by the Trump administration. The holding suggests that from now on, in cases involving such policies, lower courts may grant relief to individual challengers, but will not be allowed to issue orders that generally prevent immigration officials from engaging in certain practices. This could have far-reaching implications for immigration policy. Over the past five years, a number of legal challenges to immigration policies have disrupted the implementation of these measures. Big picture, it seems that the legal process to stop some immigration policies in court will be much slower and more painful for immigrant supporters. The timeframe for these cases to reach the Supreme Court is already long and the Supreme Court only accepts a limited number of cases each year.

Making it harder for government officials to be held accountable for unconstitutional behavior

In two cases, the court restricted options for bringing civil actions against individual government officials who allegedly acted unconstitutionally in the performance of their official duties. In a case called Egbert v. Boule, the court limited a precedent it had set in the 1971 ruling known as the “Bivens”, which allowed a person to sue a federal officer for damages if his or her fundamental rights were violated. In the Egbert case, the judges ruled unanimously that a federal border control agent could not face individual civil liability for alleged retaliation under the First Amendment. In a part of the majority that the three Liberals disagreed with, Thomas also severely curtailed the circumstances under which a claim of excessive violence in the Fourth Amendment could be brought against a federal officer. The decision resulted in the extension of immunity to protect federal officials from private litigation, even if it did not overturn Bivens. Later in the term, the court also undermined the so-called Miranda rights protections – that is, warning suspects allegedly receiving from law enforcement that they have the right to remain silent and seek counsel – in a case called Tekoh v. Vega. The court said the failure of a law enforcement official to provide a Miranda warning did not make the employee vulnerable to a civil lawsuit alleging he violated the Fifth Amendment. The decision did not eliminate Miranda’s right, as the information obtained when she was violated would still be excluded from the trial. However, critics of the ruling said that without the additional legal risk of a possible civil action, law enforcement officials would feel less motivated to comply with their Miranda obligations. CNN’s Ella Nilsen and Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this …