The doctrine of one last chance holds that the Court must stay its hand once — but just once — before issuing immediately disruptive decisions. This precept most obviously arose in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, where the Court adopted an extraordinarily strained statutory reading to avoid what would have been an immediately disruptive result: invalidating the Voting Rights Act’s coverage formula. But the Court didn’t truly avoid the constitutional merits — instead, it packed its decision with dicta suggesting that the merits would likely be decided against the Act’s constitutionality. In this way, Northwest Austin gave notice that the coverage formula was in trouble, thereby affording the political branches a window of time in which to take action. This hesitancy was nowhere to be found in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, which the Court chose to hear despite the absence of a circuit split. By exhibiting a high degree of restraint in the moment, Northwest Austin ironically established the groundwork for Shelby County‘s subsequent invalidation of a key federal statute with bipartisan support in Congress.
Bond looks a lot like Northwest Austin. In Bond, the constitutional issue concerned federal legislation implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention. Ruling on that issue could have taken the United States out of compliance with a major international agreement — and at a time when U.S. foreign policy substantially involves curbing the use of chemical weapons in places like Syria. Moreover, a disruptive holding in Bond would have been in the headwind of the most on-point precedent, Missouri v. Holland. These are the kinds of immediate practical and doctrinal disruptions that trigger the doctrine of one last chance. So, true to form, the Court (per the Chief) found a tenuous statutory interpretation while casting doubt on the apparently broad scope of relevant precedent — much as happened (for instance) in Northwest Austin and FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life. Meanwhile, Bond included suggestive language indicating that Holland might be subject to narrowing. For instance, Bond ends by saying that the government’s view of the case posed a “dramatic departure” from the original “constitutional structure.” Having given this warning, the Court might not be so determined to engage in avoidance the next time.