The Supreme Court Doesn’t Need Trump to Dismantle Democracy, But He Helps

Every summer, it’s tradition to draw conclusions about the end of the Supreme Court term and how its biggest decisions shaped the country.

However, this summer feels particularly untraditional. With the “shadow docket” full of appeals from the Trump administration, the term hardly feels over. And despite some truly terrible decisions, we’re also still desperately rooting for the court to save us from some of President Trump’s most dangerous actions.

We can’t pretend we’re optimistic that this Court will actually spare us from the steep authoritarian hill we’re quickly tumbling down. After all, this was the Court that handed Trump immunity from criminal behavior while president, and then, this summer, gutted the lower courts’ ability to hold back his illegal activity.

In the last month, even after the official term was over, we have seen the Court continue to enable Trump. Over pleading dissents from the three liberal justices, the conservative majority is allowing Trump to completely decimate the federal government in ways that are blatantly unconstitutional and unlawful. From independent agencies designed to be immune to political interference to whole departments that can only be unmade by Congress, the Court has handed Trump exemption after exemption to wield his administration wrecking ball.

This brazen, hackish partisanship is the lens through which we must assess the direction the Roberts Court is taking us — and it’s clearly nowhere good. That’s why the work of our lower courts is more important than ever.

Separate from propping up the Trump administration, the Court did plenty of its own damage to our civil rights and democracy. Its attacks on the LGBTQ+ community were truly vile. It dismissed the experience and health of thousands of transgender youth and the expertise of every major medical organization to uphold a malicious ban on gender-affirming care. This will create families of refugees who must flee to other states to obtain the care they need and deserve. And at a time when we most need more understanding about the queer community, it also enabled parents to censor schools that simply want to tell inclusive stories — including about families that are likely already in those classrooms.

This brazen, hackish partisanship is the lens through which we must assess the direction the Roberts Court is taking us.

The Court also stopped just short of endorsing religious public charter schools, which would have diverted taxpayer money to schools that teach religious tenets and now feel empowered to discriminate against families who don’t follow them. Justice Barrett’s recusal led to a deadlock in the Court, but it’s not hard to imagine we could see such a devastatingly transformative outcome in a similar case soon.

That wasn’t the only example of Christian nationalism the Court endorsed. States can now cut Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood to punish its clinics for providing reproductive care, from contraception to cancer screenings. This means that thousands of people who depend on Planned Parenthood across the country for other forms of reproductive and sexual health may have nowhere else to go because they’ve lost the right to choose their own provider.

There were also major setbacks for other protected groups, like those with disabilities and immigrants. The Court ruled a retired firefighter could no longer sue over a discriminatory change to her disability benefits because she was technically no longer a worker, meaning the Americans with Disabilities Act effectively doesn’t protect her anymore. And it’s now even easier for the Trump administration to separate immigrant families because the Court said that the Secretary of Homeland Security has sole discretion to revoke visa petitions if they believe there’s a sham marriage, and courts can provide no relief.

The best we can say for this Court, as is too often true most terms, is that it didn’t do as many terrible things as it could have — or that it’s not quite as extreme as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Thankfully, for example, the federal government can continue to regulate “ghost guns” and gun assembly kits. And in another ruling, the Court opened the door to allowing better police accountability when there’s an overuse of violent force by officers. But these silver linings do little to move us forward as a nation; they simply keep us from falling further away from the “equal justice under law” the Court is supposed to uphold.

We can’t lose sight of the conservative takeover of the Court and the damage it’s doing to our democracy. In case after case, the Court has made life easier for the rich and powerful and harder for the rest of us. With Republicans in control of Congress and the White House, our options for court reform are limited, but we must continue to build support for expansion, term limits and an enforceable code of ethics.

While we can hold onto hope that the Court will rein back Trump’s extremism, we must look to our lower courts for relief. The Supreme Court may have made it much harder for lower courts to push back, but not impossible. Judges appointed by presidents of both parties recognize the illegality of Trump’s actions and are holding him back in important ways. They must continue to do so, honoring their oath to the Constitution rather than obeying in advance.

That’s why it’s so critical we protect our lower courts from far-right extremists judges. Senate Democrats must take every step they can to block the loyalists Trump is trying to appoint to the bench, and Senate Republicans must be held responsible for the damage they are doing to our justice system by confirming these sycophants.

There is hope for our courts yet, but it comes from the bottom up. We can continue to fight for the judicial branch our nation deserves, pulling no punches as we call the Supreme Court out for its indefensible actions. We must imagine a future where we count the ways the Court has advanced civil rights rather than set us back. Let that be our guiding light.