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By Katherine Fung
Senior Writer
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The three rulings released by the Supreme Court this week signal that "bad" news lies ahead, legal analyst Elie Mystal said.
"That's it for today, which means nothing of real import came out today. And since we're already in June that is kind of ... BAD," Mystal said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday.
The Supreme Court ruled on three cases earlier in the day, none of which included the major cases that the nation highly anticipates this term. As of Thursday, 28 decisions remain, including more than a dozen major ones. The next opinion day won't be until June 13, so no rulings are expected until then. The 2023-2024 term ends on June 28.
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That means the court is poised to cram its rulings on abortion pill mifepristone, former President Donald Trump's presidential immunity and others all into the last three weeks of the term.
"It's going to be a (completely avoidable) mess," legal analyst Steve Vladeck posted to X.
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Mystal said that one of the biggest red flags of the limited decisions released Thursday is that the justices still haven't ruled on whether Trump can be criminally prosecuted. He argued that the delay "probably means [Justice Samuel] Alito has enough votes to do something truly awful with that case."
"Let me put it like this, if *all* the GOP justices were going to do was kick the case back down to Chutkan for further fact finding that would delay his trial to after the election, they could have done that by now," he said. "The fact that they haven't yet doesn't make me think they're going to rule *against* Trump's broader immunity claims. It makes me think (or fear, very much fear) that maybe Alito is trying to GRANT *absolute* immunity, or something near to it, to Trump."
The court heard oral arguments in Trump v. United States on April 25.
The presumptive Republican nominee has claimed that presidents cannot be criminally charged for acts they took while in the White House. The Supreme Court's ruling will directly impact the federal election interference case against him, and could go on to affect the federal classified documents case he faces in Florida. Trump's Georgia election interference case could also be throw into limbo, but that case has already been halted and is unlikely to resume until after the 2024 election.
"Both relieved that the Supreme Court didn't do anything terrible this morning and acutely aware that we should not have to spend the month of June holding our collective breath," legal commentator Madiba Dennine tweeted.
But Alex Badas, assistant professor specializing in judicial politics at the University of Houston, told Newsweek he didn't think Thursday's opinions meant much for the direction of the remaining decisions.
"The Court takes much longer to publish opinions in the most controversial cases. This is because these cases typically have multiple opinions (the majority opinion, any dissenting opinions, and then any concurring opinions)," he said, adding that "The Justices typically deliberate much more in these controversial cases. This results in more draft opinions being circulated within the Justices' chambers before they decide to publish the final opinion. Multiple draft opinions slow down the publication process."
Badas said this is particularly true under the conservative supermajority. While the conservatives on the court have been unified in decisions, they have often disagreed over the legal rationale, resulting in multiple concurring opinions that can slow the release of them.
Slate reporter Mark Joseph Stern agreed, saying on X that he didn't think that the slow pace of monumental decisions reveals "anything about the ultimate outcomes." He argued that it just showed the justices "took on way too many blockbuster cases that take forever to complete" and that the court is dealing with extra security protocols that were implemented after the Dobbs leak, which "has slowed everything down somewhat."
Badas also said that, based off oral arguments in the Trump immunity case, he doesn't think the court will grant the former president absolute immunity, and while there's been a good chunk of time that has passed, "I do not read the time between oral argument and the publication of the opinion to mean that Trump is more likely to win and that the Court is likely to endorse his absolute immunity claims."
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