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Written by John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – During his four years as president, Democrat Joe Biden has had a steady string of defeats in the US Supreme Court, whose top-ranking majority has poked holes in the agenda. his and destroy the models that have long been cherished by American liberals.
Despite the efforts of the Biden administration to preserve it, the court — composed of six justices and three liberals — in 2022 overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade which had accepted the constitutional right to abortion.
The court in 2023 struck down racially sensitive admissions policies protected by his administration that had long been used by colleges and universities to increase their enrollment of Black, Hispanic and Hispanic students. some are weak. In 2022, it expanded gun rights, rejected his administration’s position, and similarly in 2024 repealed a federal ban on “bump stock” devices that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire. as fast as machine guns.
The justices blocked Biden’s plan for $430 billion in student loan relief by 2023. They also limited access to the Environmental Protection Agency as part of a series of rulings restricting federal energy regulatory agencies. .
“I think it’s the worst series of defeats since Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s declared many of the New Deal programs unconstitutional,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, director of the University of California Berkeley Law School, talking about another judicial deadlock that confused the Democratic president.
John Yoo, who served as a Justice Department attorney under former Republican President George W. Bush, said Biden has had an “amazing number of losses” in his major lawsuits as president.
“It’s hard to think of another president in our lifetime who has lost so many high-profile cases on issues so close and dear to his constitutional agenda,” said Yoo, who is now a professor at the School of UC Berkeley Law.
Biden began his presidency three months after the US Senate confirmed his first Republican leader Donald Trump to the court, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, establishing a majority of 6-3. Trump in his first term also appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to life posts on the court along with his colleagues John Roberts, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Biden nominated only one justice. Ketanji Brown Jackson was the first Black woman to serve on the court. Because Jackson replaced Stephen Breyer, who had left the liberal justice, his confirmation did not change the court’s opinion.
Biden’s presidency ends Monday with Trump’s inauguration for a second term.
Trump may have an opportunity to revamp the conservative court’s majority by replacing some or all of its top three justices with younger judges — and perhaps even expand it if the liberal justice departs during his term.
Biden’s dismal record in major cases was to be expected, Chemerinsky said, because of the “difference of opinion between the majority of the Supreme Court and the Biden administration.”
Biden expressed frustration after his landslide defeat, at one point describing the US Supreme Court as a “regular court.” In his last year in office, Biden proposed sweeping reforms including 18-year term limits and mandatory and enforceable ethics laws.
In making this proposal, Biden said that “the extreme opinion that the Supreme Court has issued has undermined the principles and protections of human rights that have been established for a long time.”
His proposal went nowhere, due to Republican opposition in Congress.
‘RECIPE FOR FEAT’
According to Yoo, the Biden administration failed to adapt when the court made it clear that it would interpret the Constitution in ways favored by conservatives based on “the fundamental understanding, history and tradition of the document”.
By refusing to accept the amendment, the administration “pretended to be irrelevant to the important constitutional questions of the day,” said Yoo, who was a former law clerk to Thomas. “That’s a recipe for defeat.”
Conservatives have waged what is sometimes called a “war on government” — with the goal of reining in government agencies that control many aspects of American business and life — and have found a receptive audience for this council, such as while Biden has studied at many higher levels. cases.
Presidents, especially democrats, in recent decades have been relying on government agencies to advance their policy goals due to the decline in the output of the US Congress, which is often closed to parties. the parties.
During the Biden administration, the court created a conservative constitution, called the grand questions doctrine, that gives judges broad discretion to overturn executive branch actions of “substantial economic and political importance” without even if it is assumed that Congress has expressly authorized them.
The court requested the study to block the student loan relief plan that Biden had promised as a candidate in 2020 and to roll back the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon pollution from power plants.
“The environmental law and student loan cases show that the court has despised the democratic process, because the lack of congressional agency means that the process remains the only way forward for policy. of the US,” Cornell Law School professor Gautam. Hans said.
In another instance of federal regulatory power, the court in 2024 overturned a landmark 1984 precedent that had given US corporations the freedom to interpret the laws they govern, also ruling against the Biden administration. This study, known as “ Chevron (NYSE:) honor,” was long contested by opponents and corporate interests.
Biden has won other awards.
In their final ruling of his presidency, the justices on Friday upheld a law signed by Biden and championed by his administration that requires the popular app TikTok to be sold by its parent company China or banned in the United States for national security reasons.
The court in 2024 upheld a federal law that the Biden administration championed that would make it a crime for domestic violence victims to own guns. It also preserved the financial structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency created under the Democratic-backed 2010 Wall Street reform law.
But some victories hinged on the court’s ruling that opponents of the policies backed by the Biden administration lacked legal standing to sue, meaning the underlying legal issues have not been resolved and the issues could come back next time. These cases involved: access to the abortion pill mifepristone; Biden’s immigration enforcement priorities; and The Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare.
These cases “were not effective enough to ensure the political goals of the Biden administration,” Hans said.
These victories may prove to be “even greater losses” if the court deals with these issues again in a thorough way and achieve different results, Hans added.
SAME SECURITY
As much as Biden has always disappointed in court, Trump while out of office has won – mainly in three cases made in the last year.
In the biggest of those, the court accepted Trump’s request to recuse himself after he was indicted on criminal charges related to his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss to Biden – the first time accept any level of presidential immunity from impeachment. The decision said former presidents have broad immunity for official acts taken in office.
Biden called the decision “a dangerous precedent.”
Law professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Steve Schwinn, said the Biden administration found itself at the center of a long-term trend in which the court has reduced the power of federal agencies and strengthened the power of the president.
These changes “will have significant effects on federal law enforcement across the board,” Schwinn said. “We will see this immediately in the second Trump administration, with a president who has promised to use these methods in full.”
