DemDaily: The Last Orders of the US Supreme Court
July 1, 2026
The final opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) were announced Monday and Tuesday, marking the conclusion of its 2025-2026 term with decisions in a dozen landmark cases that have profound implications for Americans as our country turns 250 years old this week.
While the Court's conservative 6-3 majority ruled in favor of expanding presidential executive power, overturning campaign finance caps and rolling back transgender rights, democracy still prevailed in critical voting rights decisions and preservation of birthright citizenship under the US Constitution.
| See also: DemDaily: Supreme Court Closes Out Consequential Cases: TPS, Monsanto, Gun and Religious Rights 6/26/26 |
June 29 Decisions
Election Law: Watson v. Republican National Committee
In a critical win for voting rights -- and a crushing defeat for Trump's all-out war against mail-in voting -- the Court rejected a Republican-led effort to invalidate late-arriving absentee ballots by arguing that related federal law supersedes state law.
In the 5-4 decision authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, the high court upheld a Mississippi election law allowing mail‑in ballots postmarked Election Day to be counted up to five days later.
Barrett argued that federal election-day statutes -- which establish a uniform Tuesday in November for federal elections -- do not preempt state laws that give mail-in ballots a post-election receipt window. The case impacts at least 30 states that have similar statutes.
Executive Power & Presidential Appointments
In split landmark rulings that threads the needle, the Supreme Court blocked Trump's firing of a sitting member of the Federal Reserve, while expanding the President's authority to remove heads of independent federal regulatory agencies.
Trump v. Cook: In August 2025, Trump fired Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, a Biden appointee, in a post on Truth Social. He claimed unsubstantiated allegations regarding mortgage fraud, which Cook denied, and she sued.
Under the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, governors can only be removed by a president "for cause" (typically meaning severe malfeasance or neglect of duty). It was the first time in the Federal Reserve's 111-year history that a president attempted to fire a governor.
On Monday, in a 5-4 decision, the Court denied President Trump's request to be allowed to remove Cook from office while her legal challenge proceeds -- ruling that she was entitled to due process, such as notice and an opportunity to respond before removal. Cook’s term officially goes until 2038. Justices Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh joined the court's three liberal justices in the majority opinion.
Trump v. Slaughter: In a major win for Trump and the power of the presidency, the justices struck down a federal law that bars the president from firing members of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) except in cases of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, a Democrat who was appointed to her first seven-year term by Trump and to a second term by President Joe Biden, was abruptly terminated last year. No cause was given other than her “continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with [the Trump] administration’s priorities.”
On Monday, by a vote of 6-3, SCOTUS held that the FTC's for-cause removal provision violates the separation of powers between the three branches of government enshrined in the Constitution.
| The Supreme Court's ruling in Trump v. Slaughter overturns its 91-year-old decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which is considered the canonical precedent for the constitutionality of independent agencies in the US federal government. The case stemmed from FDR's 1933 dismissal of William Humphrey as an FTC commissioner, which the court unanimously held exceeded his presidential authority under the Constitution. |
The shocking break with the nearly century-long precedent curbing executive power gives the president sweeping new authority over two dozen multi-member agencies or commissions that Congress intended to be independent.
In her dissent, which was joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, Justice Sotomayor called the Slaughter decision “egregiously wrong," saying, “Today, the court discards that democratic regime in favor of one that distorts the structure of government to fit the majority’s theory of unitary, total executive control. The result is a president who emerges with far greater power than ever before.”
Digital Privacy: Chatrie v. United States
In the closely watched case regarding digital privacy, the justices held 5-4 that law enforcement's use of broad "geofence" warrants to collect bulk cell phone location data constitutes a Fourth Amendment search, therefore requiring a specific warrant supported by probable cause.
In the majority opinion joined by justices Roberts, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, and Jackson, Kagan explained that the purpose of the Fourth Amendment “is ‘to safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions by governmental officials.’”
June 30 Decisions
Birthright Citizenship: Barbara v. Trump
In one of the most anticipated decisions of the Supreme Court's 2025-2026 term, the justices struck down Executive Order 14160, signed by President Donald Trump on his first day in office, January 21, 2025, seeking to deny birthright US citizenship to children born in the US if neither parent is a citizen or lawful permanent resident.
Although lower federal courts blocked the order, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” as "blatantly unconstitutional," SCOTUS agreed to hear the case at the request of the Trump Administration.
The 6-3 decision, authored by Chief Justice Roberts and joined by fellow conservatives Barrett and Kavanaugh, and liberal justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson, confirmed that under the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, all children born on US soil are automatic US citizens at birth, regardless of their parents' legal or immigration status.
The Birthright Citizenship Clause under the 14th Amendment has been enshrined as the law of the land since 1868, when the Constitution was ratified following the Civil War -- to overturn the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which had ruled that Black people could not be citizens.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights -- to freely participate in our political community,” wrote Roberts.
| Bonus! The Supreme Court on Monday declined to review Trump v. Carroll -- President Trump’s appeal of the $5 million judgment awarded to author E. Jean Carroll -- leaving the 2023 jury finding that Trump sexually abused and defamed her in place. Carroll’s attorney promptly filed a motion in Manhattan federal court requesting immediate payment from Trump of the original judgment plus $779,783 in accrued interest. |
Campaign Finance Spending: NRSC v. FEC
(National Republican Senatorial Committee, Petitioners v. Federal Election Commission)
In a landmark decision on money in elections, the justices overruled, by a 6-3 vote along ideological lines, long-established federal limits under the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) that restrict how much money national political parties could spend in direct coordination with their individual candidates.
In the most transformative shift in campaign finance law since the 2010 Citizens United decision, the conservative majority, as penned by Justice Kavanaugh, sided with the NRSC's argument that capping a political party's coordinated expenditures acts as a direct restraint on political speech, thereby violating the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech.
The ruling, said Kavanaugh, “treats all political parties equally. It will allow all political parties -- including the DNC and RNC and the respective Senate and House campaign committees, as well as other parties and party committees -- to participate more freely and compete more fully in the political process, and to coordinate more closely with their candidates.”
In a scathing dissent, Justice Kagan argued that lifting coordination caps allows wealthy donors to bypass candidate donation limits by routing massive sums through joint fundraising committees and political parties, which can now directly convert those funds into unlimited candidate campaign support. This system, Kagan warned, leaves the government "increasingly unable to stop political corruption".
Transgender Athlete Bans: West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox
In a joint challenge to state laws enacted in West Virginia and Idaho that bar transgender girls from competing on female sports teams, the 6-3 conservative majority ruled that state-level bans do not violate Title IX or the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause.
Writing for the majority, Justice Kavanaugh wrote that publicly funded states and schools that participate in female sports competitions have the constitutional authority to determine sports eligibility based strictly on biological sex.
While all nine justices agreed that these bans do not run afoul of Title IX, the federal education anti-discrimination law, the three liberal justices dissented on the Fourteenth Amendment constitutional question, arguing the majority overlooked the specific nuances of the student plaintiffs.
The decision means that bans on transgender athletes -- which are already enacted in at least 27 states -- are legally permitted. It does not impact states with inclusive policies, such as California, which choose to let transgender students play on teams matching their gender identity.
Yesterday's ruling comes just over a year after the Supreme Court, also by a vote of 6-3, upheld a Tennessee law banning the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy by transgender teenagers.
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Sources: SCOTUSBlog, Brennan Center, American Immigration Council, Slate, US Supreme Court, USAToday, Politico, NYT, Slate, Reuters
