WASHINGTON (AP) — Transgender rights, the regulation of “ghost guns” and the death penalty highlight the Supreme Court’s election-season term that begins Monday, with the prospect of the court’s intervention in voting disputes lurking in the background.
Transgender rights, the regulation of “ghost guns” and the death penalty highlight the Supreme Court’s election-season term that begins Monday, with the prospect of the court’s intervention in voting disputes lurking in the background.
The justices are returning to the bench at a time of waning public confidence in the court and calls to limit their terms to 18 years that have wide support, including the backing of Democratic President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the party’s White House nominee.
Whether by design or happenstance, the justices are hearing fewer high-profile cases than they did in recent terms that included far-reaching decisions by the 6-3 conservative majority on presidential immunity, abortion, guns, and affirmative action.
The lighter schedule would allow them to easily add election cases, if those make their way to the high court in the run-up to the Nov. 5 election between Republican Donald Trump and Harris, or its immediate aftermath.
“I think there are legal issues that arise out of the political process. And so, the Supreme Court has to be prepared to respond if that should be necessary,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told CBS News last month in an interview to her promote new memoir, “Lovely One.”
The court’s involvement in election disputes might depend on the closeness of the outcome and whether the justices’ intervention would tip the outcome, David Cole, the outgoing legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said at a recent Washington event.
“I don’t think the court wants to get involved, but it may have to,” Cole said.
The court turned away multiple challenges from Trump and his allies to the results of the 2020 election that he lost to Biden.
