“We don’t work as Democrats or as Republicans,' Chief Justice Roberts often says in speeches. This year, more than any other in recent years, the justices lived up to that pledge.
The Supreme Court opened its term in October facing major cases on gay rights, guns, abortion and religious schools as well as President Trump’s effort to repeal the Obama-era policy that has protected young immigrants known as Dreamers.
For now, the chief justice looks to be standing in the way of a conservative drive to repeal the right to abortion. He appears to be playing a similar role in gun cases. And he signed onto a landmark decision by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch that vastly expanded job protections for gay, lesbian and transgender Americans.Sen.
Justices Elena Kagan and Stephen G. Breyer, two of the court’s liberals, joined with Roberts in decisions that upheld claims of religious liberty made by conservative religious groups. As he has done in previous years, Roberts showed again that he is masterful at finding the middle ground on contentious issues.The dispute over whether Trump had to turn over information about his finances to investigators was a separation-of-powers classic involving the president, Congress and the judicial system. Coming in an election year, it also had high political stakes.
“The chief has this term delivered to Trump a — very judicious — smack in the chops,” said Donald Ayer, a former Justice Department official under President George H.W. Bush.Roberts, he said, seemed to be “working deliberately to show that he and the court are not in Trump’s pocket, even as they quite often hand down ideological cases that go his way.”
Sometimes, religion deserves special treatment, not equal treatment, the chief justice said. The court ruled in favor of two Catholic schools in the Los Angeles area and shielded them from lawsuits by teachers they fired. The church’s right to control the teaching of the faith outweighed an employee’s right to be protected from otherwise illegal discrimination, the court ruled.
The apparent explanation was that the chief justice would not join with the four other conservatives on the issue.
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