Justice Clarence Thomas became the second-longest serving justice in history in May, and the court’s oldest member, at 78, keeps pushing the bench further right while ordinary people live with the fallout. He would break the all-time record if he stays on the court through May 2028. That’s the machinery of power at work: unelected lifers deciding the rules, the borders, and the limits of rights from behind marble walls.
Who Has the Power
Thomas has prompted less speculation about retirement than he once did. Instead, he keeps writing separate decisions that argue for going further. In the case over President Donald Trump’s decision to end deportation protections for Haitians, the court ruled that the move was not motivated by racism. Thomas said he would have ruled against the migrants on broader grounds and wrote that noncitizens have no right to equal treatment under the Constitution. On another front, in a case about the weedkiller Roundup, Thomas raised broader questions about whether the federal law regulating pesticides gives the Environmental Protection Agency too much power. The pattern is plain enough. The court doesn’t just interpret power; it polices who gets crushed by it.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who marked his 20th anniversary on the court in September, wrote the three major decisions Trump lost this term. He struck down Trump’s sweeping tariffs, his executive order limiting birthright citizenship and his attempt to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Roberts was the only conservative justice who sided against Trump in all three cases. He also authored the court’s decision that Trump can fire the heads of agencies — other than the Federal Reserve — that Congress had established to be independent. So even when Roberts checks one branch’s overreach, he still helps preserve the larger hierarchy that keeps agencies answerable to power at the top.
Who Gets Crushed
Justice Samuel Alito, 76, wrote major decisions that split the court 6-3 along ideological lines. He authored opinions that gutted a key section of a landmark civil rights act, struck down Hawaii’s restrictions on bringing guns into some public places, and allowed Trump to end deportation protections for migrants and to turn away asylum seekers at the U.S. border with Mexico. On the Trump cases, Alito and Thomas were the only justices to never rule against the president. That’s not neutrality. That’s alignment.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor used her position as the court’s most senior liberal justice to emphasize some of her dissents in ideologically divided cases. When she took the bench to criticize the conservative majority’s ruling about asylum seekers, Alito said he’d been blindsided and said he would have included more in his oral summary of the decision had he known she was going to speak. The next day, a court spokesperson told CNN and NPR that Alito had been notified in advance that Sotomayor would be reading her dissent. "It was a misunderstanding on Justice Alito’s part," the spokesperson said. In April, Sotomayor apologized to Justice Brett Kavanaugh for making what she called "inappropriate" and "hurtful" comments. She had criticized Kavanaugh’s opinion in a decision about immigration-related stops in Los Angeles, saying he "probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour."
Justice Elena Kagan, known for working with conservative colleagues to craft narrower rulings, wrote her first solo dissent this term. In a case about Cuban property confiscated by Fidel Castro’s government more than 65 years ago, Kagan was the only justice to rule against the property owners. Solo dissents are rare, even though Thomas has written more than 50 during his nearly 35 years on the court, according to Grant Christensen at the University of Alabama Law School and Anne E. Mullins at Stetson University’s College of Law. They wrote that "Kagan’s 16-year wait to join the ranks of the lone dissenters is a testament to her institutionalist temperament."
What They Call Neutrality
Justice Neil Gorsuch ruled against Trump once in the major Trump cases, on tariffs. Trump, who appointed Gorsuch during his first administration, said the ruling was an "embarrassment" to Gorsuch’s family. Gorsuch also suggested in a separate opinion that some of his colleagues were treating Trump differently than they had President Joe Biden. He complained that the liberals voted to strike down Trump’s tariffs as an overreach of presidential power despite being fine with broad Biden initiatives such as climate change regulations and student debt forgiveness, while some conservatives wanted to allow the tariffs even though they thought Biden had overreached.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh tied with Roberts for the justice most often on the winning side, at 95% of the decisions, according to SCOTUSblog. Kavanaugh authored the ruling that states are free to ban transgender girls from competing on female teams. He, who has coached girls’ basketball teams for years and said his role as "Coach K" keeps him in touch with the real world, stressed that every player who wins a spot on a team is taking the spot from someone else. He also said the transgender students’ desire to play sports "warrants respects." "No student-athlete on either side of the issue, whether a biological female or transgender, deserves to be ostracized or vilified," he wrote.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett drew attacks from Trump supporters after she joined the liberals and Roberts to strike down Trump’s birthright citizenship order. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-South Carolina, said on social media, "Impeach rogue, activist judges," and added, "We're looking at you Amy Coney Barrett." Barrett was also attacked last year for being a "DEI hire" when she occasionally broke ranks with most of the other conservative justices. Legal analyst David French said on the Advisory Opinions podcast that the only other reason he could think of for Barrett, a woman, being criticized unfairly for ruling against Trump when male conservative justices do not is that she benefited from a major effort to get her confirmed during a very short window at the end of Trump’s first term. "And I think there might be a feeling of like, 'We went to the wall for you; you need to deliver for us,'" he said. "And that’s just fundamentally misunderstanding what is a judge."
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson continued to build a reputation as the justice of resistance. She was in the majority the least often last term, at 67%, and wrote the most dissents, with 10, according to SCOTUSblog. Abbe R. Gluck, a Yale Law School professor, wrote that "Jackson’s third full term was a doozy of separate opinions." Jackson was the only justice to reject a Christian counselor’s challenge to Colorado’s ban on "conversion therapy" for minors. She also called on her colleagues to scrap a test for gun regulations that the court created in a landmark 2022 decision, saying the test is "unworkable." Jackson warned about the court looking too partisan when the conservative majority allowed its decision limiting the Voting Rights Act to take effect early, clearing the way for Republicans to impose a new congressional map in Louisiana before the November elections. "It is so important for the public to perceive us as neutral, nonpartisan," Jackson said at a meeting of the American Law Institute. "We know that public confidence is really all the judiciary has."
Separate court actions also affected election procedures. Two federal judges, presiding nearly 1,000 miles apart, issued conflicting rulings in recent days that left unclear whether states can legally abide by a Trump administration push to use federal data to confirm all voters are citizens. One judge blocked states from using a government database to confirm voters are citizens. Another said some states must have access to it. The broader dispute added to midterm confusion. Related rulings cited in the coverage included the Supreme Court’s decision that mail-in ballots arriving after Election Day can be counted and its decision allowing an Illinois congressman to challenge mail-in balloting. The people casting ballots get the confusion. The institutions get to call it procedure.