Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. The Supreme Court still hasn’t ruled on Donald Trump’s immunity claim, which continues to hold up a federal election interference trial. But the court kept mifepristone access (for now), while unleashing deadly gun consequences as the term nears its end with several key rulings remaining.
Those consequences come from the court striking down the bump stock ban issued by the Trump-era Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Bump stocks attach to semiautomatic rifles, enabling rapid fire. The ban followed the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, which was the deadliest in modern U.S. history.
Writing for the six Republican appointees, Justice Clarence Thomas said that the Trump administration had overstepped. The justice reasoned that bump stocks don’t technically convert semiautomatic rifles to “machine guns” under federal law.
Dissenting for the three Democratic appointees, Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized Thomas’ “artificially narrow definition,” which she said “will have deadly consequences” and “hamstrings the Government’s efforts to keep machineguns from gunmen like the Las Vegas shooter.”
It’s the latest pro-gun ruling from the court that expanded Second Amendment rights in 2022’s Bruen decision, which Thomas also authored. But Friday’s bump stock ruling in Garland v. Cargill isn’t a constitutional case; it’s about agency power and statutory interpretation, which means that Congress can pass a law explicitly banning bump stocks. Until then, the court will have outsized power over this issue.
Speaking of, Senate Republicans blocked Democrats’ latest attempt to pass Supreme Court ethics legislation. The failure came the same week that Senate Democrats revealed that Thomas received more undisclosed trips from billionaire Harlan Crow. This follows Thomas’ acknowledgment last week that he should’ve disclosed previous trips from Crow.
The justices also rejected the challenge to mifepristone access on legal standing grounds. Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained that the anti-abortion doctors and groups didn’t have the right to bring their case in the first place because “a plaintiff’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue.”
That was the obvious call, but it was never guaranteed that the court would see it that way. At any rate, the ruling doesn’t eliminate threats to reproductive rights that loom nationwide, including from a possible second Trump administration and from the court itself, which has another important abortion ruling due in the coming weeks.
On top of the immunity ruling, we’re also still waiting on the decision over obstruction charges for Jan. 6 defendants that could affect Trump’s case, too.
Another big decision still to come is United States v. Rahimi over the constitutionality of barring gun possession for people subject to domestic violence restraining orders. Like the bump stock ruling, that one has implications for gun control nationwide.
Among those paying attention is Hunter Biden, who was convicted of gun charges in Delaware this week under a law barring gun possession for drug users. With President Joe Biden saying his son shouldn’t expect clemency, the defendant’s legal fate on appeal could be guided by the decision in Rahimi.
We’ll learn next week whether and how the court rules in these cases and others as Trump moves closer to his July 11 sentencing in New York.
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