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(Photo of Supreme Court Justices alongside Joe Biden and Kamala Harris during the inauguration of Ketanji Brown Jackson on September 30, 2022. Left to right; Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Sonia Sotomayor, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh)
UNITED STATES – In the United States, regression has only just begun. After the very conservative Supreme Court blasted abortion rights in June, a new session begins this Monday, October 3, which could end with further reversals, particularly for the rights of African Americans or gay couples.
Discrimination, suffrage, immigration… Several controversial cases are on the menu of the High Court, which is making a comeback for the first time in its history with a black woman among its judges.
The arrival of Ketanji Brown Jackson, appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, does not alter the balance in the temple of American law: He retains a solid conservative majority of six out of nine justices, including three chosen by Republican Donald Trump.
Blast positive discrimination in schools
For Ilya Shapiro, an expert at the Manhattan Conservative Institute, the next “in the crosshairs of the court” is the 1978 ruling that defined the legal framework for affirmative action programs at universities.
On October 31, the Supreme Court will hold a hearing on the selection mechanisms at the prestigious Harvard University and the North Carolina Public University.
These institutions, like many others, consider racial criteria to ensure student diversity and to correct the under-representation of Black and Hispanic young people that results from the United States’ racist and segregationist past.
These policies, sometimes referred to as “reverse racism,” have always been the subject of challenges from the right, but appeals have always failed.
The Supreme Court itself has twice ruled that universities can take certain racial criteria into account provided they aim solely to ensure the diversity of the student population. She now seems ready to back down.
Restrictions on African American suffrage
In another filing linked to an Alabama state election card, which is on the menu as of Tuesday, she was able to unravel part of the emblematic 1965 law that ended racial segregation rules that restricted voting rights for African Americans in the South.
This “civil rights law” provides the ability to group black voters into a constituency to ensure they have few representatives. But it’s illegal to focus them too much to reduce the weight of their voices.
The stakes are high in a country where black voters are overwhelmingly voting for Democrats, while white voters are more likely to support Republicans.
Another North Carolina filing could have “serious implications for democracy,” according to Sophia Lin Lakin, who follows election issues for the ACLU.
That state’s elected Republicans are defending a new interpretation of the constitution that, if adopted by the Supreme Court, would give “local legislatures uncontrolled power over the organization of federal elections,” she says.
Easier to discriminate
Five years after ruling in favor of a Christian pastry chef who refused to sell a wedding cake to a male couple, the Supreme Court will also revisit this sensitive issue, this time from a website creator.
In 2018, it issued a limited-scope decision. This time around, merchants whose products are “creative” in nature could be more widely allowed to break anti-discrimination laws in the name of their religious beliefs.
If we follow this logic, “Architects may refuse to design houses for black families, pastry chefs to bake birthday cakes for Muslim children…” fears David Cole.
Correction of the “excesses” of the 70s
In 2021-2022, “the Court relied on this conservative bloc to reconsider long-established case law” and “appears poised to proceed (…) without qualification,” according to David Cole, legal director of the powerful civil rights organization ACLU.
In June, the Supreme Court overturned the ruling that had guaranteed American women the right to abortion for nearly 50 years, sanctified the right to bear arms, strengthened the public profile of religion, and restricted public powers.
His decisions left left confused, but pleased conservative circles, which for years denounced the court’s “judicial militancy” which had become the arbiter of important societal debates.
Ilya Shapiro, an expert at the Manhattan Conservative Institute, believes the court is in the process of correcting “the excesses” of the 1970s.
By June 30, the deadline for its verdicts, the Supreme Court also has to rule on the policy of deporting undocumented immigrants, the death penalty or the policy of adopting Native American children.
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