PBS News Hour

JOHN YANG: The Supreme Court ended its term this past week with the six justice conservative supermajority, flexing its muscles to make big changes in law in society, killing race conscious college admissions, shelving President Biden student loan forgiveness program and siding with an evangelical Christian website designer who doesn't want to create websites for same sex marriages.

Big bold steps.

But looking at the entire term, there were times that the conservative justices made more incremental changes and even made alliances with their liberal colleagues.

Marcia Coyle is the news hours Supreme Court analyst.

Marcia, so much of the headlines, this term were about the justices extracurricular activities.

MARCIA COYLE: That's right, John.

This has not been a particularly good time for the Supreme Court.

There were reports on lavish trips taken by Justices Thomas and Justice Alito.

The fact that they did not disclose those trips as gifts or transportation really roused a lot of interest in and a lot of dismay, particularly on Capitol Hill.

There was an attempted assassination of Justice Kavanaugh.

There were protests in front of the justices homes, especially the conservative justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.

So it was a tough time.

All of this came together as well, bringing pressure on the court to adopt an ethics code and to do better in terms of disclosures on their financial reports and also to be more transparent in terms of recusals.

Justice Thomas, in particular, was targeted because of his failure to recuse in an election case out of Arizona that his own wife had worked on in terms of trying to overturn the 2020 election results.

So, I'm sure John Roberts, who cares very much about the image of the institution was cringing throughout the summer as all this transpired.

JOHN YANG: The ideological split.

So six conservative justices on one side, the three liberal justices on another did hold in a number of cases, the distinctions between those two sides really came out and some of the written opinions.

MARCIA COYLE: Absolutely.

I think affirmative action was a good example.

The student loan case was a good example.

And even the case about the website designer who claimed her free speech rights were being violated if she had to create a website for same sex couples, when she wanted to expand her business to wedding websites.

So we really did see some dramatic differences in how they view the issues that come before them.

And much as you know, we said a year ago, this is still even though we're going to talk about maybe some alignments between the sides, this is still a very conservative, aggressive court.

JOHN YANG: But we did see cases in which the some conservative justices sided with the liberal justices, to give them a majority.

MARCIA COYLE: Absolutely, one of the biggest cases involved, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act a case out of Alabama involving redistricting, there was a lot of concern within the civil rights community about this case.

The court had already imposed certain restrictions on Section 2, and there was fear that it would do more damage to Section 2 in this case, but it didn't happen.

Instead, the Chief Justice along with Justice Kavanaugh, join the left side of the bench, and really a very strong affirmation of section two of the Voting Rights Act.

JOHN YANG: Did, you know, so much was made in Dobbs that the Chief Justice didn't join them in overturning Roe v. Wade, that he sort of had trouble?

They said sort of leading this court at that time.

Does this what's -- what does this look like after this term?

MARCIA COYLE: Well, I think most people would agree that the Chief Justice seem to regain if not control, more influence, but largely because he was able to bring along Justice Kavanaugh and the other three justices on the left, you know, whether that's going to hold in future cases, so much depends on the cases that are on the docket and what they choose to take.

And they choose to -- they have been choosing to take some very controversial divisive cases.

So I think they're we're just going to have to wait and see.

But for this past term that that just ended, the Chief Justice's sort of preference to move incrementally, although his critics might call it, you know, faux judicial restraint.

I think that was the phrase Justice Scalia used once.

You know, he was able to do so in certain key areas.

JOHN YANG: This was also the first term for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, what did we learn about her from watching her this term?

MARCIA COYLE: She is a voice to be reckoned with.

She may not have the votes, but she will be heard her very first week on the court in the Alabama redistricting case.

She just sort of sent a shot across the bow of the bench to Justice Thomas, and she has called herself an originalist.

And she made it clear that she did not see a colorblind constitution, which has been just as Thomas's sort of mantra for decades now.

She asks a lot of questions.

And I think you can attribute some of it to the fact that she was a trial judge for eight years.

She managed a courtroom.

To do that, you have to -- you can't be a shrinking violet, and she clearly isn't.

JOHN YANG: The court was away for the summer now.

They'll be back the first Monday in October.

They've already taken some cases.

What are they like?

MARCIA COYLE: I think the one that there'll be a lot of attention to is Rahimi versus United States.

That's the case that asks whether the federal law that prohibits someone who's subject to a domestic violence restraining order can have a gun.

The lower federal appellate court struck down that provision and the United States came to the Supreme Court with an appeal.

And there's been a lot of trouble in the lower courts trying to apply Justice Thomas's standard under the Second Amendment for when gun restrictions can pass constitutional muster.

And I think the court took this because it knows that and it may have to provide a little more guidance on what to do with it.

JOHN YANG: This they handed that the new rule down just two years ago, in Braun (ph) case.

MARCIA COYLE: They did that last term.

And also, then there are a couple of cases that will be very important.

The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, there's a challenge to that, that could pretty much end that bureau.

And then the court is also going to look at an old doctrine, that it's called the Chevron Doctrine about giving federal courts giving deference to agency decisions when they're trying to interpret an ambiguous statute that they enforce that could have huge ramifications for federal regulation.

JOHN YANG: Marcia Coyle, you'll be watching it all, thank you very much.

MARCIA COYLE: My pleasure, John.