The Supreme Court today issued rulings in five argued cases (and dismissed the certiorari petition in a sixth). Four of those rulings were unanimous, and the fifth (Blom Bank Sal v. Honickman) was nearly so, with Justice Jackson concurring in all but one part of the majority.
Perhaps more remarkable, at least to those who view the Court only through a political lens, is that each of the three majority opinions by the liberal justices reached a result that would be politically coded as conservative. These three cases weren’t trivial: SCOTUSblog identified them among the eight remaining cases that it classified as “major cases.”
These rulings provide occasion to posit the very modest proposition that, for all of my many disagreements with and criticisms of the three liberal justices, they are much more principled than the Court’s MAGA critics are. (Yes, that is a very low bar.)
Let’s take a quick look at these three cases:
In Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission, the Court, in an opinion by Justice Sotomayor, ruled that the Wisconsin supreme court violated the Establishment Clause when it held that Catholic entities weren’t “operated primarily for religious purposes,” and thus weren’t entitled to an exemption from unemployment-compensation taxes, because they neither engaged in proselytization nor limited their charitable services to Catholics. The Wisconsin supreme court had divided 4 to 3 on ideological lines (as I spelled out in my post on its ruling in March 2024). Justice Sotomayor’s majority opinion faults the Wisconsin supreme court’s liberal majority for imposing a denominational preference that differentiates between religions based on theological lines.
In Ames v. Ohio Dep’t of Youth Services, the Court, in an opinion by Justice Jackson, ruled that Title VII does not require that a member of a “majority group” meet a heightened burden in order to proceed on an employment-discrimination claim. The plaintiff in the case is a heterosexual woman who alleges that she was denied a promotion and demoted because of her sexual orientation. As Justice Jackson notes, five courts of appeals had “held or suggested that majority-group plaintiffs must satisfy a heightened burden to make out a prima facie case of disparate treatment under Title VII.” Justice Jackson’s admirably concise opinion relies on text and precedent to conclude that “Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements onmajority-group plaintiffs alone.”
In Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, all nine justices sided with gun manufacturers in holding that a federal statute (the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act) barred a lawsuit by Mexico that alleged that the gun manufacturers aided and abetted unlawful gun sales that routed firearms to Mexican drug cartels. Justice Kagan’s majority opinion reversed the decision reached by three liberal judges in the First Circuit.