The US Supreme Court opens its new term under the shadow of a presidential election that threatens to create fresh strains at a court already deeply enmeshed in the nation’s political divisions.
Three months after releasing a barrage of far-reaching rulings, the justices return to the bench Monday with a docket that looks relatively tamer, notwithstanding clashes over so-called ghost guns and medical care for transgender youths.
The wild card is the election and the too-close-to-call race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. With litigation already raging around the country – and Trump making unsupported claims that Democrats are preparing to cheat – the justices face the prospect of being drawn into a polarizing showdown they might prefer to avoid.
“I think the court would rather not be in the position of determining the outcome of the election,” said Rick Hasen, an election-law expert at UCLA School of Law. “They’d rather stay out of it.”
That doesn’t mean they won’t be asked. Already the court has turned away calls to put Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on the ballot in Nevada and to restore independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the ballot in New York even though he has suspended his candidacy. Potentially bigger fights loom over the rules for mail-in ballots and state certification of election results.
A major election case would test a conservative-majority court whose public standing has taken a hit in the face of ethics controversies and divisive rulings, including the 2022 decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion. A Marquette Law School poll released in August found 43% of adults approve of the court and 57% disapprove.
The court managed to sidestep major election controversies four years ago. Although the justices addressed issues involving pandemic-inspired rule changes, they firmly rejected a Trump-backed bid by Texas to nullify Joe Biden’s victory in four pivotal states.
Whether they can do so again may depend on just how close the election is. When the Supreme Court got involved in 2000, sealing George W. Bush’s victory over Al Gore, it intervened in a race so tight it came down to fewer than 600 votes in Florida.
“If it’s so close that it turns on just a single state that is very close, then I think we’d see a repeat of Bush v. Gore,” Hasen said. “But that is not a likely occurrence, just based on the odds.”…