With a flurry of decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court demonstrated its willingness to restrain President Donald Trump when he flagrantly oversteps his authority, writes Rita Trichur.Evan Vucci/Reuters
The Supreme Court of the United States is serving as an effective check on President Donald Trump despite being stacked with conservative justices.
That country’s top court issued a flurry of decisions this week that demonstrate its willingness to restrain Mr. Trump when he flagrantly oversteps his authority or attempts to evade personal accountability.
Progressives will understandably take issue with some of the high court’s recent rulings. For instance, its track record on LGBTQ rights is appalling, including a new decision that upholds state bans on transgender athletes.
So, I’m not suggesting that it gets it right every time. No court does.
But the U.S. Supreme Court, which features a supermajority of conservative judges – six of its nine members – has repeatedly shown that it is prepared to strike down some of the President’s most problematic policies regardless of partisan considerations.
That should be a source of comfort to Americans and the rest of the world, frankly, because it shows the U.S. system of checks and balances remains functional despite Mr. Trump’s increasingly autocratic inclinations.
In recent days, the top court delivered multiple high-profile decisions that invalidated some of Mr. Trump’s pet initiatives.
On Tuesday, for instance, it upheld the concept of “birthright citizenship,” which is the idea that almost all individuals born in the U.S. are entitled to citizenship as a matter of course.
U.S. Supreme Court sides with Constitution, defies Trump’s birthright citizenship order
In doing so, six of the court’s justices, an even split of conservatives and liberals, nullified an executive order signed by Mr. Trump that attempted to prevent the children of illegal immigrants or temporary visa holders from becoming U.S. citizens by default. Three judges, all conservatives, dissented.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights – to freely participate in our political community," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s decision.
“The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”
Chief Justice Roberts, nominated by former president George W. Bush, is a conservative who assumed his role in 2005. There is no overstating the blow this decision dealt to Mr. Trump’s anti-immigration agenda.
Sure, Mr. Trump mused in a post on his Truth Social platform about overcoming this obstacle through new legislation in Congress. This amounts to false bravado, however, because of his waning popularity and the fast-approaching midterm elections.
On Monday, the high court issued a series of other setbacks to Mr. Trump.
In a 5-4 ruling, the court blocked Mr. Trump’s bid to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, arguing she was denied procedural protections.
The case, which will now return to lower courts, stems from Mr. Trump’s attempt to remove Ms. Cook from her position at the central bank on ginned-up allegations of mortgage fraud.
Ms. Cook has not been charged with any crime and has maintained that she was targeted because of her refusal to “bow to political pressure” on interest rates.
The court’s decision, also delivered by Chief Justice Roberts, stated: “Not only the fact of independence but also the appearance of independence is key to the Federal Reserve’s design.”
(In a separate 6-3 decision, however, the court tossed Mr. Trump a bone by ruling that he can legally fire other independent regulators without cause. The reasoning makes sense when one considers that those federal officials are accountable to the president. The Fed, though, is entirely different because of its influence on financial markets.)
Also on Monday, the top court delivered a ruling that upheld state laws providing grace periods to allow for the late arrival of mail-in ballots that are postmarked on or before election day. The decision is a clear rebuke of Mr. Trump’s efforts to restrict mail-in ballots over dubious claims of voter fraud.
Perhaps the most stinging disappointment for Mr. Trump was the high court’s refusal of his request to appeal a US$5-million verdict against him in a case involving writer E. Jean Carroll.
That judgment resulted from a jury finding him liable for sexually abusing and defaming Ms. Carroll, who has alleged that Mr. Trump assaulted her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the 1990s.
Mr. Trump, who has called the lawsuit “a Fake Case,” not only denies the allegation but has claimed he has never met Ms. Carroll.
This string of setbacks follows the top court’s 6-3 decision this past February to strike down Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs, including some of those imposed on Canada.
Remember how Mr. Trump used his State of the Union address to disparage the three conservative jurists – Chief Justice Roberts, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett – who sided against him in that case, calling them “fools and lapdogs” among other insults?
Well, they’ve proven to be incorruptible instead.