Court allows Trump administration to move forward in sending group of immigrants to South Sudan

This is part of SCOTUSblog’s term in review series, in which scholars analyze some of the most significant cases of the 2024-25 Supreme Court term.

In Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, Inc., the Supreme Court rejected a constitutional challenge to the procedure used to appoint members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to their positions. In doing so, the court upheld the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that health insurers cover a range of preventative healthcare services – those recommended by the task force – without any cost sharing from patients. The decision will surely have an immediate practical impact, tamping down the cost of important healthcare interventions for millions of Americans. In the longer term, the decision may also prove significant as a matter of constitutional doctrine, for in reaching its judgment, the court clarified some important points about the Constitution’s appointments clause and the power of the executive branch. 

Yesterday, July 2, Amy and I were on the podcast Advisory Opinions. Please check out the episode here.

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

• Trump turns to Supreme Court in fight to oust Biden-era consumer safety officials (Alec Schemmel, Fox News)
• The supreme court is cracking down on judges – and letting Trump run wild (Steven Greenhouse, The Guardian)
• Nationwide injunctions should have been nullified long ago (George Liebmann, The Baltimore Sun)
• Amy Coney Barrett Is the Most Interesting Justice on the Court (David Lat, Original Jurisdiction)
• Why Trump Evaded the Key Question of His Citizenship Order at the Supreme Court (Paul Finkelman and Gabriel J. Chin, Slate)

Updated on July 2 at 5:25 pm

Although the Supreme Court officially began its summer recess last week, there are already signs that the next few months may not be particularly restful for the justices (or SCOTUSblog). On Wednesday morning, the Trump administration asked the court to temporarily pause a ruling by a federal judge in Maryland that ordered the reinstatement of three members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission whom President Donald Trump fired in May.

This is part of SCOTUSblog’s term in review series, in which scholars analyze some of the most significant cases of the 2024-25 Supreme Court term.

The best that can be said for Trump v. CASA is that it could have been far worse. Its methodology and conclusions are myopic and wrong, and it is especially unwelcome during a period in which each passing day seems to bring new incursions by the executive branch upon individual rights, the separation of powers, federalism, and the rule of law. The court held that federal courts may not give universal injunctions, which are orders that block the application of a law or an executive branch action to anyone who might be harmed by it, not just its application to the plaintiffs. But despite the court’s seemingly categorical rejection of the universal injunction, the ironic possibility exists that the decision will turn out to be, as Justice Samuel Alito put it, essentially “academic.”  

The Supreme Court closed out its 2023-24 term by handing then-candidate Donald Trump a major victory, holding that former presidents have at least presumptive immunity for their official acts. That ruling arguably helped clear the way for Trump’s return to power in January 2025 and, in turn, his outsized role in the Supreme Court’s 2024-25 term.