While most of the attention on yesterday’s penultimate rulings for the year has rightly been on the overturning of Humphrey’s Executor, giving President Trump the ability to fire (formerly) independent regulators, he suffered losses in three other significant cases.
BBC (“One big win and three defeats for Trump in dramatic day at Supreme Court“):
On the second-to-last day of Supreme Court decisions for this term, the justices delivered a big win for Donald Trump.
But beneath the headline-generating ruling on expansive presidential power, the court gave some indications that this particular president may not always get what he wants – and the three liberal justices may have a few unexpected allies amongst the six conservative justices on the high court.
[…]
While the Supreme Court on Monday gave presidents broad powers over supposedly independent regulators, a different grouping of justices drew the line when it came to Trump’s efforts to remove a member of the powerful Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
In a narrow five-to-four ruling, two conservatives – Chief Justice John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh – joined the three liberals in blocking Trump’s attempts to remove Lisa Cook from the central bank’s board.
He has alleged that she committed mortgage fraud, but hanging over the particulars of this dispute were Trump’s larger disagreements with recent decisions by the Fed (including Cook) not to lower US interest rates.
Writing for the majority, Roberts said that Cook deserved a chance to challenge her removal and rebut Trump’s accusations, which would have to be further substantiated. Roberts warned of the “calamities that could arise” if presidents were able to impose their will on the Federal Reserve.
If that ruling weren’t enough of a setback for the president, another court decision on Monday – on whether federal law prohibits states from counting mail-in ballots postmarked by election day but received after – broke against the president.
In that case, the three liberal justices were joined by Roberts as well as Trump-appointee Amy Coney Barrett, who penned the majority opinion.
States have broad powers to set the “time, place and manner” of holding congressional elections, Barrett wrote, quoting the US Constitution. She dismissed Trump’s allegations that mail-in balloting is susceptible to election fraud, indicating that this was an issue best resolved through the “democratic process”.
[…]
If Trump’s Truth Social account is any indication, the biggest source of his ire on Monday was buried in 28 pages of court orders released on Monday morning.
Listed among dozens of cases the justices chose not to weigh in on was “Trump, President of US v. Carroll, E. Jean”.
With no further explanation provided, the court declined to review the $5m civil judgement against Trump that was the result of a 2023 jury finding that Trump had defamed Carroll, a former magazine writer who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.
“I will continue the fight against this weaponization and lawfare case against me, including the ridiculous claim of defamation, with all my power and strength,” Trump wrote on his social media website.
“This injustice cannot be allowed to stand!”
Although Trump plans to appeal a separate $83.3m finding of damages won by Carroll in a second case, this is likely the end of the line for Trump’s efforts to block the $5m judgement.
The Court announced that it will release its final rulings of the term today. While the campaign finance and transgender sports cases will draw interest, the main event will be the birthright citizenship issue. Ordinarily, I would expect a 9-0 ruling striking down Trump’s executive order as plainly violating the 14th Amendment and every precedent on the matter. After yesterday’s rulings, I now expect a closely divided ruling.
