Edan Held
World News Editor
Just before taking their summer recess, which lasts from the middle of June/early July until the first Monday in October, The Supreme Court ended their session with several bombshell cases. Here is a summary of each case they ruled on:
The most important and controversial case was their ruling on Affirmative Action, or race-conscious college admissions. The court ruled in a 6-3 vote down party lines that race-conscious college admissions at private and public universities are unlawful.
Another case the court ruled on was student loan forgiveness. Ruling on the same 6-3 party line majority, the court found that Biden’s plan to forgive $400 billion in student debt — a maximum of $20,000 per person making under $125,000 — was not approved by Congress, and was therefore unconstitutional.
Ruling in the same 6-3 party line majority, the Court ruled that the First Amendment gives a web designer the right to refuse to make a website for a same-sex marriage, even though a state law banned discrimination based on sexual orientation.
In a 5-4 decision, which included the three liberal justices along with Justice Roberts and Kavanaugh, both conservatives, the court ruled that Alabama must redraw its congressional districts because it had only one majority Black district (even though ¼ of all Alabama voters are Black), which the court found to violate the Voting Rights Act.
Despite rumors that the court was looking to strike down the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), which strives to protect Native American heritage by placing Native American children with distant family members or members of their tribe, it ruled 7-2 to uphold it.
In a 9-0 ruling, the Court expanded the necessary accommodations an employer must make for religious reasons, supporting a US Postal Worker who refused to show up to work for religious reasons and was later punished.
These are the major rulings, although they also ruled on topics such as environmental action and tech companies’ liability for what is posted on their platforms. Following last year's overturning of Roe v. Wade, this marks two years of bombshell Supreme Court cases, so we’ll have to wait until next year to see what else they might rule on.