Court takes up potentially important case on campaign-finance regulations

On Saturday, one day after the Supreme Court handed down some of its most anticipated decisions of the 2024-25 term, Chief Justice John Roberts was in Charlotte, North Carolina, answering questions about judicial power and independence at a conference for the judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, as well as the lawyers who practice in that area.

On Friday, June 27, the court issued its final opinions on the merits docket for the 2024-25 term. It decided the following cases: Trump v. CASA, Mahmoud v. Taylor, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, and Federal Communications Commission v. Consumers’ Research. Please join us over the next two weeks for our term in review series, offering expert analyses of some of the most significant cases of the term.

Also please check out our annual SCOTUSblog Stat Pack for the 2024-25 term, which can be found here.

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles and commentary related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Monday morning read:

• After Supreme Court term, Chief Justice Roberts shrugs off ‘venting’ by those who lost (John Fritze, CNN)
• Trump says he will move aggressively to undo nationwide blocks on his agenda (Justin Jouvenal, Cat Zakrzewski, and Jeremy Roebuck, The Washington Post)
• After criticism from MAGA world, Amy Coney Barrett delivers for Trump (Lawrence Hurley, NBC News)
• Justices’ nerves fray in Supreme Court’s final stretch (Josh Gerstein, Politico)
• A Supreme Court Victory for Parental Rights in the Woke Wars (The Editors, National Review)

The Supreme Court will not decide right now whether Louisiana violated the Constitution when it enacted a congressional map last year that created a second majority-Black district. In a surprise order on Friday, the justices announced that they will hear new arguments in the case sometime during the court’s 2025-26 term – likely in the fall. The justices did not provide any reasoning for their decision not to resolve the dispute before their summer recess, instead indicating only that they would “issue an order scheduling argument and specifying any additional questions to be addressed in supplemental briefing” “[i]n due course.” 

Updated on June 29 at 10:29 am

Last year the Supreme Court took a significant step to limit the power of administrative agencies with its decision overturning the Chevron doctrine, which for 40 years had instructed courts to show certain deference to an agency’s interpretation of the laws that it administered. On Friday, the justices declined to take another step to curtail those agencies’ power. By a vote of 6-3, the court turned back a challenge to a federal program that subsidizes telephone and high-speed internet services in schools, libraries, rural areas, and low-income communities in urban areas. In doing so, the majority declined to revive a theory known as the nondelegation doctrine – the principle that Congress cannot delegate its lawmaking powers to other institutions. 

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a challenge to the structure of a Department of Health and Human Services task force that makes recommendations about which preventive services, including HIV medication, insurers must cover at no additional cost to the patient. By a vote of 6-3, the justices ruled that members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of 16 volunteer experts, were properly appointed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services and did not need to be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.