The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority has shown in its blockbuster abortion ruling and other high-profile decisions in recent days that it is fearless when it comes to overturning – and even ignoring – historic precedents.
And the conservative justices, with a 6-3 majority, may just be getting started, even as their current term came to a close on Thursday.
Among the cases the court already has taken up for its next term, starting in October, are two that give its conservative bloc an opportunity to end college and university policies considering race in admissions to achieve more student diversity – an approach the court upheld in a 2003 precedent and reaffirmed in 2016. Another case in the coming term involving federal protections for waterways will put a further precedent to the test.
The court in a flurry of recent rulings has overturned or undermined its own decades-old precedents.
“I think the most conservative justices dislike much of modern American law and are actively changing it. They aren’t going to let precedent get in their way,” University of Virginia Law School professor Douglas Laycock said.
The conservative justices have become increasingly assertive since the addition of former President Donald Trump’s third conservative appointee Amy Coney Barrett in 2020. Democratic President Joe Biden’s appointment of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, sworn in to replace retiring fellow liberal Justice Stephen Breyer on Thursday, does not change the court’s ideological balance. read more
In the abortion ruling, called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized the procedure nationwide, as well as one from 1992 that reaffirmed it. The conservative majority also consigned to oblivion rulings from 2016 and 2020 that struck down Republican-backed state abortion restrictions.
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas has been forthright about his willingness to ditch Supreme Court precedent.
“When faced with a demonstrably erroneous precedent, my rule is simple: We should not follow it,” Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion in a 2019 case.
That Thomas opinion focused on “stare decisis,” a Latin term referring to the legal principle that courts should not overturn precedents without a special reason. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito seemed to take the same view in the June 24 abortion ruling, writing that the Roe landmark was “egregiously wrong.”
Thomas in the abortion case caused considerable alarm on the left by writing in his concurring opinion that the court should consider overturning other precedents protecting individual freedoms including the 2015 ruling that legalized gay marriage, the 2003 ruling that ended state bans on same-sex intimacy and the 1965 decision that protected access to birth control.
