Week 25: Nine Justices, One Theory

Max: Nine justices. Twenty cases. Two weeks. Blake: Wow. Max: The Supreme Court is sitting on a pile of rulings that could rewrite the rules on citizenship, money in elections, the Federal Reserve, and they have to drop it all before summer recess. Blake: And that deadline pressure is real. SCOTUSblog noted this week the court has just under two weeks before end of June. Twenty cases. The math is tight. Max: Right, right. So Blake, welcome back. I'm Max, you're Blake. And today we're doing something a little different. We're not hopping around the news; we're treating this final Supreme Court sprint as a single story. Blake: And the premise worth pressure testing: Are these really isolated rulings or is there a common thread? That's the argument we're going to earn, not just assert. Max: See, I knew you'd make me work for it. Good; so here's the short version of what we're looking at today. Blake: Hit me. Max: All right, Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship. Argued April first, affects an estimated two hundred and fifty five thousand children born here every year; then the Federal Reserve case, Trump versus Cook—first time in history anyone's challenged the Fed Act's removal protections in front of the Nine. Speaker 3: Wow! Blake: And that one touches your mortgage rate more directly than most people realize. Max: Exactly—and then two transatlantic cases waiting on equal protection grounds plus the campaign finance case. NRSC versus FEC, which almost nobody's covering and which could flip how every Senate race in the midterms gets funded. Blake: So light week? Max: Super chill. U.S. News called this docket cases with widespread ramifications on state laws ahead of the midterms. Blake: Let's find out if the premise holds, starting with the 14th Amendment. Max: Twenty cases—nine justices. The clock runs out basically at the end of June and the press is going to cover every ruling like it dropped from space with no context. Blake: You mean the fire drill approach. Case comes out, cable news spins for forty eight hours, everyone moves on. Max: Exactly, but Blake, I've been staring at this docket for weeks and I keep coming back to one question: what if these cases aren't separate fires? What if they're chapters? Blake: Walk me through that, because on the surface birthright citizenship and campaign finance don't have an obvious through line. Max: Okay, so CBS News flagged this; the court already dropped two blockbusters before the final stretch; struck down Trump's sweeping tariffs; gutted the Voting Rights Act, and that sent redistricting fights spreading across the South. Blake: And those two went in opposite directions politically. One hurt the Administration, one helped it. Max: Right, right, and that's kind of the point. This court is not working from a team roster. SCOTUSblog noted there are still Twenty cases left to decide with under Two weeks to go: Birthright Citizenship, Transgender Athlete Bans, Campaign Finance, Presidential Removal Power. Blake: That's a lot of constitutional weight concentrated in a very short window. Max: Dude, it's like they saved every hard problem Speaker 4: for the end. Max: problem for the last ten days. U.S. News put out a piece this week laying out eight major cases still pending; Election Law, Second Amendment, mail-in ballots, it's a lot. Blake: So what is the threat you're actually claiming connects them? Max: Every one of these cases is asking the same foundational question: Who gets to redefine what the Constitution means, and by what authority? An executive order? A state legislature? The court itself? Blake: That's a big acclaim, Ginnett sounds. Max: I know, that's sort of the premise. Blake: So let's test it. You want to start with the one that's been around the longest, written into the Constitution in 1868, and see if an executive order can just rewrite it. Max: That's exactly the right place to start. Short pause. Blake: Okay, so five words subject to the jurisdiction thereof. That's the entire fight. The Trump administration signed Executive Order 14060 on day one, arguing those five words exclude children born to undocumented parents or temporary visa holders. Max: And the press covered it like an immigration story. It's really not. Blake: Right. The actual question is constitutional authority. Can a president redefine a clause in the Fourteenth Amendment by signing a piece of paper? Max: Which, spoiler, the courts have not been enthusiastic about. Every single lower court blocked this order. Blake: Every single one. And then SCOTUSblog covered the April first oral argument, and their read was that a majority appeared skeptical of the government's theory. Max: Trump literally showed up in person, first sitting president ever to attend oral arguments. Blake: Which, I mean, bold move, didn't seem to help. Max: The justices didn't exactly roll over. Blake: So here's what the administration actually argued. Their theory hinges on domicile. They read Wong Kim Ark, an 1898 precedent, and said the key word was domicile, meaning lawful permanent residence. If your parents aren't domiciled here legally, the clause doesn't apply. Max: Wong Kim Ark is 128 years old. Bold—the court established citizenship for a child born to Chinese immigrant parents—nobody has overturned it. Blake: And the Library of Congress analysis shows the Solicitor General told Justice Sotomayor directly they're not asking to overturn Wong Kim Ark; they're asking the court to reinterpret it. Max: Which spoiler is a distinction that does a lot of heavy lifting. Blake: Basically, Justice Gorsuch said the same thing. He pushed back hard on the domicile. South theory, pointing out that in eighteen sixty eight immigration was barely regulated, the concept doesn't translate cleanly. Max: And the real world stakes on this are not abstract. The Migration Policy Institute projected two hundred and fifty five thousand children annually would be born without citizenship if this order takes effect. Blake: two hundred and fifty five thousand a year. Max: Wow. Blake: That's not a rounding error. Max: Think about a baby born in a Texas hospital next February. Hurry, her parents are on work visas; under the order, she's not a citizen; what country is she a citizen of? Blake: Potentially, none: the NAACP Legal Defense Fund flagged that some kids could end up stateless depending on the parents' home country laws. Max: Which is a nightmare scenario that nobody's really talking about loudly enough. Blake: And that's the thing the press keeps missing: this isn't about the politics of immigration, it's about whether the executive branch can unilaterally WILL Speaker 4: you? Max: Redefine constitutional text that's been settled law for a century. The court gets to define what the Constitution means: not a Truth Social post, not an executive order. In that question, who gets to define constitutional text runs directly into the next case, because Trump didn't just try to redefine the Fourteenth Amendment, he also decided to redefine what "for cause" means when firing a Federal Reserve governor. That one hits different when you realize it's never been tested. Tested in 113 years of the Fed's existence, the statute, the Federal Reserve Act, says governors can only be removed for cause. Nobody has ever pushed that to the Supreme Court – until now. Blake: Okay, so Truth Social, that's how it started. Max: A central bank governor fired via Truth Social post. Blake: In August, twenty twenty five, Trump accused Lisa Cook of mortgage fraud-allegations she denies-and just "boom," done, over social media. Max: And lower courts blocked it immediately. Blake: Every. Single. One. Then, January, twenty twenty six, SCOTUSblog covered the oral argument-and dude, even the conservative justices were- Is there piling on the Administration's lawyer? Speaker 3: CNN reported, Blake: Mm-hmm. Speaker 3: "It felt less like whether Cook would win and more like how she'd win." That's a telling distinction. Blake: Right, right, right. But, Blake, walk me through why this one hits different than the Birthright case, because to a lot of listeners this might sound like a DC personnel dispute. Speaker 3: So here's what I'd say from my time watching institutions: the Federal Reserve's independence isn't just a norm, it's the thing that stops a government from cutting interest rates to Speaker 4: juice. Speaker 3: It's to juice the economy before an election and letting inflation run wild afterward. Blake: The whole point is that whoever controls rates can't also be chasing votes. Speaker 3: Exactly; and the Federal Reserve Act, passed in nineteen thirteen, built in a four clause removal standard for governors specifically for that reason. SCOTUSblog noted this is the first time any president has ever challenged that language in court. Blake: To over a hundred years nobody touched it. Speaker 3: Nobody. So walk through the math with me on what happens if Trump wins this. Blake: Hmm. Speaker 3: Say the next Fed chair won't cut rates, the president fires a governor, puts someone in who votes yes. What does that do to your mortgage? Blake: Rates drop on political schedule, not economic reality. Inflation spikes later, you paid artificially cheap money for a house that's not worth less in real terms. Speaker 3: And your savings account lost purchasing power. That's not abstract; that's a kitchen table number. Blake: The justices seem to get that; NPR noted all nine—liberal and conservative—expressed doubts about the Administration's position. Nine! That almost never happens, which makes you wonder what the ruling says about the limits of executive power over any independent agency. And that's actually where this pivots, because the next case is flip the question: it's not the President trying to control a Federal institution, it's state legislatures drawing their own Speaker 4: boundaries. Blake: Their own lines under the Fourteenth Amendment. Speaker 3: That's up next. Blake: Transgender athlete bans (twenty-seven states and the Court has to decide whether those lines survive equal protection scrutiny); that's up next. Sure. So the same constitutional question-who gets to draw a legal category-now moves to the gym. CBS News flagged these as among the biggest outstanding decisions of the term-"Little versus Hecox and West Virginia versus BPJ" both argued January thirteenth. Speaker 3: And the press coverage on these? Almost entirely culture war; which, okay, I get it, it's emotionally charged, but the legal question is a lot narrower than the headlines suggest. Blake: Walk me through what the Court is actually being asked. So Idaho and West Virginia both passed laws defining sports eligibility by biological sex at birth. The question on the table is whether that category, that definition, survives equal protection scrutiny under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court is not ruling on biology, not ruling on gender identity. Speaker 3: Right, right; it's a legislative line drawing question: Can a state define biological sex as a category for sports purposes, and does that definition hold up constitutionally? Blake: Exactly; and SCOTUSblog reported after the January arguments that the conservative majority seemed likely to uphold the bans; but even Justice Gorsuch was asking, "What's straightforward here? Speaker 3: That detail matters, because likely to uphold an And how broadly they write the opinion are two completely different things. Blake: That's the part school boards are sweating. These laws now cover Twenty-seven states. Compliance policies have been drafted assuming a ruling-a narrow opinion, one that says these specific statutes survive on these specific facts leaves everything else unsettled. Speaker 3: And a broad opinion goes the other direction-sets a national standard that constrains what every state State can or can't do going forward. Blake: Meanwhile, two real kids are at the center of both cases: Lindsey Hecox, who just wanted to try out for Boise State's cross country team, Speaker 3: Yeah. Blake: and BPJ, a middle schooler in West Virginia, using her initials. Both sides have turned them into symbols. Speaker 3: And that's the part that actually bothers me-the legal argument is genuinely hard, but the kids in these cases aren't arguments, they're people. Blake: You're not going to get a sermon from me on the underlying question. Reasonable people land in different places, but the court's job is the constitutional one: does this category, drawn this way, pass the test? Speaker 3: And the ruling sets that standard nationally, whatever it is-that's the weight of it. Blake: Which leads somewhere unexpected, because the next case the court is sitting on is also about line drawing. Just swap athletic eligibility for campaign spending and the lines get drawn by political parties. Max: Campaign finance-nobody's talking about it. Blake: OK, shifting gears, and I'll be up front, this one doesn't have the emotional pull of the cases we just covered. Speaker 3: Which is exactly why it might matter more. Blake: Right? NRSC v FEC, National Republican Senatorial Committee against the Federal Election Commission. Not exactly a headline that makes your heart race. Speaker 3: Walk me through the origin, because the J.D. Vance connection is actually wild. Blake: So, 2022, Vance is still running for Senate in Ohio. He files suit alongside the NRSC and the NRCC, arguing that limits on coordinated spending between a party and its own candidates violate the First Amendment. Speaker 3: Meaning a party can spend unlimited money independently, but the moment it talks to its candidate about Speaker 4: his campaign, it is in danger of being charged with a crime. Max: But how to spend it? Blake: There's a cap, and the Republicans say that's constitutionally absurd. If the party and the candidate share a platform, a message, a voter base, how are they separate speakers? Max: That's actually a real question. A 25-year precedent called Colorado II said coordinated spending is essentially a contribution, so it can be capped. Blake: And the conservative justices at oral argument in December were not exactly exactly sold on that logic. Max: To be precise, they appeared skeptical. We don't have a ruling. Blake: Fair, but ABC News reported the conservative majority looked ready to overturn a 25-year decision. That's not nothing. Max: The stakes are direct: According to U.S. News, this decision lands before the 2026 midterms. Senate spending caps currently run from $127,000 in small states up to nearly $4 million in California. Blake: If those caps disappear, every Senate race this fall is funded differently-no phase in, no transition. Max: And it doesn't break cleanly along partisan lines. Both parties use coordinated spending. Whoever wins this case wins the next funding cycle. Blake: Four cases, four actors pushing past a boundary. We should probably talk about what that pattern actually means. So zoom out for a second. Four cases; four different arenas in the same question underneath every single one. Max: Right, and the question isn't partisan. Birthright Citizenship, the Fed firing trans athletes, campaign finance-each one is asking, does a democratically written boundary survive when someone with power decides it doesn't apply to them anymore? Blake: That's it. That's the whole stress test. Max: And what this term is showing-what's actually surprising if you follow the conventional wisdom-is that the Roberts Court is not acting like a Trump-aligned institution; it struck down the tariffs six to three. Nine justices expressed doubts about the Fed firing; these are not rubber stamps. Blake: Dude, that six to three tariff ruling, Roberts wrote it himself. The majority opinion basically said: If you want extraordinary power, show Congress gave it to you explicitly. That's the major questions doctrine, and he applied it against his own political coalition. Max: Which is the Roberts project, right? He's been building this for twenty years, the idea that the court polices all three branches, not just the ones he disagrees with politically. Blake: So it's less Team Red versus Team Blue and more nobody gets to rewrite the rules without a hall pass. All passed from the text- Max: Which is either deeply principled or deeply frustrating, depending on which executive order you're rooting for. Blake: Pretty much; and here's what I keep coming back to: twenty cases still waiting," SCOTUSblog reported, "with under two weeks left in June." These rulings are landing fast. Max: So what do you actually do with that? Because people hear a Supreme Court term and check out. Blake: OK, here's the concrete thing. Every state AG filed amicus briefs in at least one of these four cases. Find your state's brief, takes about 20 minutes to read, and you'll know more about where your state actually stands than a month of cable news. Max: And that matters because when the opinion lands, your state attorney general's office has to decide how to respond, whether to comply, whether to challenge, whether to punt. The brief tells you what they were arguing before the decision. Blake: Your State Attorneys General's website. Search the case name; the brief is public. Max: The Court, this term, isn't a team; it's an institution that's deciding whether constitutional text means something fixed or whether it bends to whoever holds the most power right now. Blake: And we'll know the answer before July. All right, that's a wrap on this week's episode. And honestly, Blake, this one felt different. Max: Yeah. The thing that keeps sticking with me is the reframe we landed on early. This isn't four separate cases. It's one argument, four rounds. Blake: And that baby born in a Texas hospital next February, that image just cuts through all the noise. That's constitutional law with real skin on it. Max: Right. And with SCOTUSblog reporting 20 cases still left to decide before end of. End of June: the clock is ticking. Blake: Dude, opinions could drop any Thursday morning; so if this episode helped you see what's actually at stake, share it with one person who needs the context. Max: Subscribe so you don't miss it when the rulings land. Blake: Yeah. Max: We will be here. Blake: We will absolutely be here. Your town needs you in the room. Go read your state AG's amicus brief. It's shorter than you think. Max: Thanks for listening. See you next Saturday. Blake: Later, everyone.