The Supreme Court’s conservative majority continued to march American law toward the right during its term that ended last week, in a steady stream of 6-3 decisions in major cases along with a flood of emergency appeals sparked by the Trump administration.
The two dynamics played out over the past months in decisions such as those that upheld Republican-backed actions to ban gender-affirming care and exclude Planned Parenthood from federal funds, and orders that sided with President Donald Trump’s policies on many moves of his that lower court judges had halted.
The court’s decisions in contentious cases often came down to three votes — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett M. Kavanaugh — that determined whether the court’s most conservative justices or its Democratic appointees would prevail.
