Voting rules, f-***, and Obamacare: Supreme Court court to wrap up with a Surprise

May 31- 10:11 p.m.

As the Supreme Court wraps up its spring term, the justices are preparing to weigh in on a series of hot-button issues, including healthcare, voting laws, and college athlete compensation.

It has been a tumultuous year for the court. Just before the justices began hearing cases last fall, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, long the most prominent liberal on the bench, died after a long battle with cancer. And when former President Donald Trump tapped Justice Amy Coney Barrett to fill her vacant seat, Democrats reacted with dismay and called for court expansion. Once President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Justice Stephen Breyer faced increased pressure from many liberals to retire and make way for a younger judge.

All the while, the court has been going about its business completely over the phone because of the coronavirus pandemic. In the past month, it has delivered a number of important decisions, most notably handing Google a massive victory over Oracle in a copyright case. But there’s much more to come from the court in June, the month in which it usually releases its most politically sensitive decisions. Here are five of the biggest cases still awaiting a decision before the court’s summer recess.

1.

The Arizona Republican Party and the Democratic National Committee have been feuding over ballot laws since before the 2016 election. When the Supreme Court heard the case this year, though, it received renewed attention because of several attempts to challenge the 2020 election.

The laws in question require two things. The first is that a ballot is thrown out if it was cast in a precinct other than the one matching the voter’s home address. The second is a ban on “ballot harvesting,” a practice in which third-party carriers collect absentee ballots and deliver them for counting.

Democrats claimed that the laws are racist because they disproportionately affect black, Latino, and Native American populations. Republicans disputed that accusation. During arguments, the court appeared divided on the case, with multiple justices saying that it was difficult to determine if a voter integrity law had discriminatory intent.

2.

The NCAA’s control over student-athlete compensation has long been a sore spot for many players and fans. The court heard a case in March to decide if the league can stop colleges from giving athletes education-related benefits for their work.

The case came in response to a lower court ruling finding the NCAA in violation of antitrust law. The NCAA opposed that ruling strongly, writing in its petition that upholding that decision will “fundamentally transform” the character of the league, blurring “the traditional line between college and professional athletes.”

During oral arguments, every justice found some fault with the NCAA’s arrangement, leading many to speculate that the court will rule against the league. But what exactly the court will say is anyone’s guess.

“On the one hand, there’s concern about blowing up the NCAA,” Barrett said during arguments. “But then, there’s messing up general antitrust law.”

3.

The court’s legalization of gay marriage in 2015 gave rise to a whole genre of cases in which religious institutions faced off against gay and transgender nondiscrimination regulations. In this one, the city of Philadelphia sued Catholic Social Services, a foster care agency run by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, after a newspaper investigation found that the group would not place children with gay couples.

The court is likely to rule against Philadelphia after the justices showed skepticism to the city’s arguments against CSS. During oral arguments in the fall, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that the city seemed to be unfairly “looking for a fight” over the issue.

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However, the case could have bigger implications. Attorneys for CSS are asking the court to overturn the landmark 1990 decision Employment Division v. Smith, which has limited the extent to which religious institutions are protected from nondiscrimination laws. During arguments, the justices appeared hesitant to revisit Smith, leading many to predict a narrow ruling.

4.

The future of the Affordable Care Act became a contentious issue after Trump appointed Barrett last fall. Democrats, at the time, argued that she would be the decisive vote in striking down former President Barack Obama’s signature achievement by declaring the act’s individual mandate unconstitutional. But during oral arguments, the justices appeared to have other ideas.

Rather than strike down the whole act, as a coalition of states led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked, the justices discussed the possibility of severing the individual mandate from the rest of the act, allowing Obamacare to stand. The Trump administration opposed this course of action. When Biden took office, he reversed course and supported it.

“This is a straightforward case for severability under our precedents,” Kavanaugh told a lawyer defending Obamacare, “meaning that we would excise the mandate and leave the rest of the act in place.”

5.

This case involves a cheerleader, the f-word, and the extent to which public schools can punish students for things they say online. It arose after Brandi Levy, a Pennsylvania teenager, did not make the cheer team and took to Snapchat in an expletive-laden rant. School officials banned her from the squad for a year, citing the offending post.

But, Levy’s attorneys countered, she posted the Snapchat off campus and on a Saturday — both of which are typically considered outside the school’s jurisdiction. But the school, backed by the Biden administration, argued that its control over student speech should be extended to a wider range of things that happen on the internet that could affect school life.

That was the question at which the court hammered away in April, with most of the justices calling the situation a tough case pitting freedom of speech against school security. At one point, Breyer remarked that if schools could punish students for off-campus swearing, then, “My goodness, every school in the country would be doing nothing but punishing.”